Apples and a break

Apples at Oyster Bay. On a tree without tent caterpillars.

And still out of reach.

I've been busy this week, sitting at home pounding away at my keyboard, and have a pile of non-blog photos to deal with and camera manuals to study. I'll be taking a few days off from the blog. Back soon!

Greedy!

The apples on the tree outside my bedroom window are ripe and dropping on the ground. I've collected several bowlfuls for eating, made a batch of applesauce, and baked a few with oatmeal crumbles. The compost bin is full of apple cores, and the house is full of fruit flies.

I've trapped many, but there are always more. And now my corners are full of tiny spiders getting fat on fruit flies. I appreciate their help.

Fruit fly on the kitchen wall.

A few of the apples, with the few fruit flies that didn't leave when I approached.

Fruit flies on a blemish on an apple.

A small cross spider, Araneus diadematus, has built herself a web in a handy location (for me) just at eye level by the kitchen entrance, and seems to be a bit bigger every day. I caught her two days ago with a mouthful of fruit fly:

She's so handy I can even measure her without disturbing her. She's 7 mm long today.

 I've set up a fruit fly trap, which did reduce the airborne population a bit, but then I decided to feed my friendly cross spider. I took off the lid an inch away from her web, and two fruit flies hit the web immediately. Instantly, half a second or less later, Little Miss Patience, here, had dashed across the web and caught one of the flies. As expected.

What surprised me was that now, with her fangs full of fruit fly, she dashed to the other end of the web and grabbed the second fly, then returned to the centre carrying both of them. Which she tied up in one little bundle and settled down to eat.

A veritable feast; a two-fruit-fly taco!

When I came back a few hours later, there was no sign of the flies. The web was clean and repaired, and LMP was sitting in the centre, waiting again.

And the rest of the flies from my trap were loose; they're even perching on my computer screen as I work.

I wonder; if I gave her three flies, would she catch all three together?

Raindrops on apples

Favourite things ...

Roadside apple tree, Race Point.

Little green apples

The first yellowed maple leaf fell on the garden this afternoon, signalling the beginning of the end of our summer. And under the apple tree at Centennial Park, the ground is covered with small, wormy apples, half green, half red.

I bit into one. Too hard to chew, and sour, to boot.

Westham Island Herb Farm

Second in the Westham Island Herb Farm series.

The Ellis family has been farming at this location in Delta since 1916. The on-site outlet for their produce, WIHF, is snuggled up against the farm proper; a complex of sheds and a farmhouse, surrounded by extensive fields.

At this time of the year, most of the fields are resting; the store will close for the winter in two weeks. But the owner, Sharon Ellis, ends the year with a bash and a blaze of Hallowe'en colour and fun.

Pumpkins, of course. Starting next week, there will be carved pumpkin faces everywhere, lit up each night until Hallowe'en. And there are costumed figures, smiling "scary" masks, a haunted house for the little ones (billed as "Terror in the Jungle" and housed inside a quonset greenhouse.) I was tempted to pretend to be a kid just to go in and see what they've cooked up.

Is that a wicked grin, or just insane? Uncle Herb, inviting us into his "Jungle".

But there's more to be seen. On the far side of the pumpkin festival, there's a tiny, old-timey general store, carrying everything from home-made jams and jellies to soap and buckets.


Through that back door, a little lawn overshadowed by a hard-working kiwi vine, still producing in spite of the chilly weather:


Vintage farm tools and farmhouse dishes decorate outside walls.


The flower is made of parts of machinery. And does anyone know what that wheel would have been used for?

Down a path past a battery of wheelbarrows, there is a henhouse and stable. The henhouse was empty, but this birdhouse had some pretty tenants:

Birdhouse. No birds.

Wasps, instead. With a spider web as curtain across the door.

The only chicken we saw.

One of the residents of the stable

Clematis climbing the chickenwire

Back around the front, we went in to see what veggies were available still. We bought newly-dug potatoes and carrots. (Try to remember the smell of a fresh-pulled carrot -- worth the stop all on its own!) Some of the carrots were a pale yellow; I had never seen any like them. I got a few onions, too, and garlic heads. And apples, of course.

Mouth-watering

Crookneck squash

The owner (I think it was) chatted with us as she cleaned veggies by the back door. Did you know that potatoes keep better if they're not washed? I didn't. I bought the washed ones, anyhow; I would use them in a couple of days.

Back out to the car with our loot, stopping on the way to invade Miss Pumpkin's privacy in the bath:

Rubber duckie and all

Of course, if she hadn't planted herself in the flower/herb/squash bed right by the driveway, she would have reason for complaint. As it was, she seemed completely unperturbed by our swarming around.

Missus Pumpkin's tractor was bogged down; ...


... she was still by the roadside when we left. She waved goodbye.


Bye! See you again in the spring!
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