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Monday, Aug. 05, 2002 - 8:38 p.m. Photos. Yeah, I know- I promised you photos. But first, a quick gardening update. Yesterday morning, I drug the hose around, watering the smaller beds. I had run the sprinkler most of the day on Saturday, hoping to stave off the damage being caused by the unrelenting heat we are still suffering through. It�s not as good as rain, of course. Tap water is sterile, and contains chlorine to boot. All this does is keep your plants alive. They hardly grow, and in some cases stop growing altogether. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the garden. I was ready to set the sprinkler out front to water the flowerbeds. In one the beds is my miniature nectarine tree. Since the fruit has turned red, I have been checking them for ripening about ever day. The tree rats have been working on the buggy peaches left down in the back yard, so the nectarines have been left alone. I did my �thumb and first finger� test (to gauge softness), and a few of the fruits gave enough to let me know that it was almost time for the harvest. I might have been able to fill harvest bucket as soon as Monday (today). Here is a picture of the tree, taken just before we left yesterday. This will show you both how small the tree is, and how much fruit it contained:
Sometimes, it doesn�t take much to crack the boy up. Anyway��.. I turned the sprinkler on, and we all left for Sunday brunch (my dad�s choice for his birthday meal). We were gone all of 1 � hours. When we pulled into the driveway, I could already see the damage. There were three of the nicest nectarines lying on the ground, one small bite taken out of each. So the furry bastards found the tree after all. I guess they finished off the peaches and started looking for what they could do to piss me off next. Except for one little problem with their plan: I just went ahead and harvested the fruit right then and there. I even picked up all of the fallen or bug damaged fruit and tossed them into the compost can. While this was going on, one of the marauders sat in a middle branch of the neighbor�s crab apple tree, chattering at me. I don�t speak �tree rat�, but I could tell he wasn�t happy that I beat him to the punch. See, I don�t always loose to the tree rats. Sometimes, I get what I work so hard for. Let them look for fallen acorns for the rest of the year��.. I ended up with a (totally filled) five-gallon bucket of the fruit. Tonight, right after work I set to the task of processing it. I did the boiling water dip and peel, and then started cutting the fruit up. The spraying program I followed this year worked. I had some surface damage to the fruit, but no worms. That is the first time that this has happened with this tree. I made a batch of nectarine jam (8 half-pints), a batch of nectarine butter (first time for this one-like apple butter, but different-doh!10 half pints of that), and then froze a small bag of pureed fruit for ice cream (2 cups) and a larger bag for a cobbler (5 cups) I added a little sugar water to those to help preserve the fruit�s fresh flavor. I ended up throwing away about 15 pieces of fruit that was just too green to work with. That�s better than watching the rats eat all the ripe fruit any day�. Ok, a few celebration photos. Early Saturday, I had a friend of Codeman shoot a photo of Lease and myself in front of our great new central park fountain. The vandals didn�t do any real damage to the basins, besides a little staining of the bowls. It is really a great new asset to our dull town:
Saturday night, we enjoyed The Fixx. They didn�t sound half bad live:
By the time we made it to the Dave Mason band show, I wasn�t in a photo-taking mood. I did fire the lens up over 100 times that day, but most of the shots are of friends and family. Here are a couple of those. The first one is of my friends The Anti-Quisp and Christian Slater (and myself):
No, I didn�t have someone dump water on me (although that might have felt good). It was still too damn hot, and all the beer I drank had to leak out somewhere. The next shot is of The Anti-Quisp and me with our friend Gary (no nickname) He was born on the same day as Lease. Don�t try to draw any conclusions from that:
This last one is of a very young man who was way into the music being played on the local stage. Lease asked the mother for permission before I kept the photos I took, and we sent copies to her email account. For that reason I don�t think she would mind if y�all saw one of my favorites:
Hey, that�s enough for today. I could fill a bunch of pages with photos from this weekend, but then I would be out of storage space, wouldn�t I? I think I need to get one of those pages that stores your photos for free, but don�t let you link to them. Maybe someday. But tomorrow? Photos from Sunday���.
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