An explanation.....

A bit back I mentioned popcorn bloom...I had meant to link back to a post with the photos below but forgot to. Then I wanted to find the rest of the photos and rescan them with the scanner I have now...it would do a better job. But guess what?--I could not find them.
Anyway, these first two photos were taken by Roger....at the orchard I used to work at. I had broken my leg that year, and had a walking cast on it still when these were taken. It had rained and everything was just saturated, so Roger took the photos for us. You have to enlarge these to even get an inkling of what it was like.
And compare the photos above with one below that I took 3 or 4 years ago...notice in the one above there is not one bud that is not open, but in the one below, some clusters are all bloomed while other clusters of blooms have not even begun.

My boss' wife, or as we always said, the one that wrote my checks, explained to me that it was called popcorn bloom when all the blossoms bloomed at once and all the trees bloomed at the same time...a rare occurrence. And I must say that I started work there in the fall of 1987, and the time above has been the one and only time it happened to this date.
I wanted to get out there this spring to take more photos, but I am probably too late now. I talked to my partner in crime out there and they were blooming there a couple weeks ago. I also wanted to get up to the big orchard up north, and haven't had the chance to go back. I think this is one of the first years I haven't seen them both during part of the bloom...and last year is the first year that has went by that I haven't been out to 'our' orchard in the fall during harvest.

I must say there is only one or two things more fun to do that pick apples...just something about looking and seeing what all has been accomplished during the day. And fun being out in the sun and even rain, though not fun when it is so muddy you have to worry about getting your picker stuck, or when it is hard to get the tractor to pull the load up a slick, clay hill.

When I first started there, we used to pick into crates and load them on the wagon. During the last few years, we started picking into milk crates, pouring them into a big bin that held approx 10-12 bushels. There were 3 or 4 of those bins on a mud boat....the mud boat would just dig into the mud and not slide over the ground as easily as it did when it was dry.

That mud boat was about like having a tractor and trailer sometimes...to have that thing trailing behind always took a little bit of thinking when wanting to turn around and head back to the barn with a load. There were always a tree missing here or one there, but you had to take into consideration were the apples still on the tree you were swinging through...or even if you just went to the end of the row it took some thought in a couple places.

I sometimes wonder if I will ever forget where things are out there...the different varieties of trees. And the odd trees planted here and there....I was always supposed to map out where everything was for the other girls...just never got it accomplished.

I also always mean to go and pick a day or two in the fall but never do...I am afraid I would either be disappointed, or else I would not be satisfied with just a day!

That's My World Tuesday

It's again time to visit the world through the That's My World Tuesday meme...it is simple if you want to join just click on the link and you can show off your part of the world. Or, if you are not ready to join, you can just see the world through other peoples blogs by clicking on the links there.

It sure was with sadness that I read Tom and Imac are retiring from the team. They have been an encouragement to me in blogland.

Now to my post for today...I worked for years at an apple orchard. The picker on the left side of the row of trees was my picker for years. (that is not me on it.) If I am out there to visit, it is still my machine. The tractor pictured is not the tractor I started with...it is only about 7 years old as I speak. It was bought new, ordered with tires as small as they come till it would fit through the trees when they are loaded down with apples.
These are just a few of the apple trees...the ones above are some of the younger trees. I probably helped set some of them. The orchard is a small orchard--it had about 2,000 trees. In those 2,000 trees we had 20+ varieties.
favorite job I ever did out there, or maybe for all time, was grafting. I felt like I was creating something...but I sure loved picking and didn't mind the pruning except sometimes the cold got to me. When I was pruning I felt like an artist at work.
The above was the the first variety picked at our orchard; they are EarliBlaze. And the ones below are Blushing Golden, picked a bit past mid season and they are probably my favorite apple.
These below are Arkansas Black...they were picked at the very end of October, and at that time we only had the Granny Smith apples to pick after, though we did plant some Pink Ladies before I quit, and they have an even longer growing season that the Grannies, as we called them.
The Arkansas Blacks are gourmet cooking apples...but a lot of people love them because they are so hard and crisp.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of where I spent years of my life. The orchard is still a working orchard, and I still visit every now and then.

A stroll through the orchard

I had opportunity to go through the orchard that I spent so many years at; so many happy hours. I was asked to give my former boss's spouse a ride to the doctor, so soon as we got back to the orchard, I took off to see what I could see.

The first thing I saw was a deer taking off at the other end of a row of trees. So quick I did not see if it had antlers or not. And when I got to that end of the orchard, I saw a flock of turkeys. I actually wondered was it a mom and her almost grown babies. I was too far away to take good pictures, and by the time I got closer, they were long gone.

It was the middle of the day--sure not a good time for taking pictures but I snapped a few anyway. The orchard has been sprayed not too long back--you can see it clearly on the apples. I hope I can make it out there at a more opportune time before the fall is over.

Visiting out there sure made me miss the good old days. The original boss I had was so much fun to work for and with. The song that I have playing sure makes me think of when I first worked there. We didn't eat out under a maple, but we did sit around the dinner table and he would tell us tales of their childhood. As well as tales of when he was an insurance man.

I bet it is one of the only jobs where anyone would ever come home sick from laughing so hard. When I first started working there is when his youngest son got married. The girl he married and I have been friends from the moment we seen each other. Even though they lived in another state, she used to come home in the fall and spend it helping them grade apples. And later it got till she would come for different periods of time at different times of the year.

Well, he would have us as an audience when we were working around the grading room, or greenhouse, etc....jobs where you could carry on a conversation. And he would get us laughing till we could not do much work...and there was a time or two where I became physically sick from laughing so hard: headache and stomach ache. And yes I remember the stories but I just cannot tell them the way he could. And his wife would add comments to the tales to elaborate on some of the details.

This is just part of what I miss...he is gone now. Passed away after I quit, but he had had a stroke in 2001 and not been able to talk since. There are times though that I can just hear him making one of his witty comments...he would always say, "You could be more like me if you tried" or some such nonsense. Oh, and if I or anyone mentioned having a headache he would always tell us that if he had a head like ours his would hurt, too.

I will close now...the song that is playing just always makes me think of him and his wife....and the old John Deere tractor.

Sky Watch Friday

I am getting this ready to post for Sky Watch as soon as Tom opens up for business. If you would like to join, or just see more Sky Watch photos, see him at Welcome to Wigger's World.
The photo above was taken at the apple orchard I visited earlier this week. While I was out on that drive I was in every type of weather almost. Sunshine and blue skies part of the time, overcast and dark with a little rain part of the time. Click to enlarge photos for the best viewing.

The other photos below are scanned images...the top was a winter sunset. I am not sure what year it was taken. The bottom one is looking south from my back yard in 1994. Oldies but goodies.

These pictures were taken by my husband...it is the one and only time popcorn bloom happened during the 19 years I worked here. That is when all the trees bloom at the same time and every bloom opens at once....I had broken my leg and had on a walking cast so it was definitely too wet for me to get out in the orchard. It was absolutely one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever in my life witnessed. And wonder will I ever see it again.

I set and looked trying to decide if I know which rows of trees these are--I think the row on the left is red delicious and the row on the right is yellow delicious. As long as I worked there and as many trees as I had to climb down out of, you would think they would each and everyone have a name.



I will try to change subjects now...think I have just been missing the place and I for sure miss my boss. He passed away last year after a long----I don't know the word. He had a major stroke and was never the same. It happened in 2001, he lost his ability to walk, talk, eat. Yet his face just glowed with happiness when we were all in the house at lunch and talking and laughing. When he was well, it was always very entertaining...

He always sat and told tales of his childhood, or else told stories on his own children. Or tales of when he was an insurance salesman. I would give anything to have recorded the conversations. He has made me laugh till I was literally sick from laughing so hard. His daughter-in-law and I can still get to laughing over tales he told us...and they were all true is what makes them even funnier.

Now, to what is currently happening....it's another cold, cold day here in the midwest....I don't think it got out of the 20's the entire day. Of course that is not cold compared to some. Knowing that does not make me appreciate it any more.

I did sew quite a bit today on the baby quilt tops. I should have had them done but kept getting detoured by little things. For one thing I paid to download Norton 360 to my computer last night. Nothing is ever simple for me and this computer...it literally took a couple hours to do it. And it was NOT that it was slow to download. At first would not accept my name, email, etc. Had to go back and start from scratch more than once. Then I had to un-install some things. You name it, it will happen to me.

Then today every time I got on it seemed like the connections were taking so long. So I would fool around and look...found one article that stated that it did not support the
Firefox browser...don't know what the heck that means exactly. Finally wrote the tech support and I think it means basically that I have to have internet explorer as my default web browser to get the live updates. I had never changed that. And I haven't done anything different really, but it seems to be working better tonight. So maybe it was ISP having problems....

Hopefully tomorrow I will have pictures of the finished tops to post....if nothing else happens.

More from the orchard...
This first picture is Grand Prize plums...yummy!

The rest of the pictures are scanned in photos...the orchard I worked at was small. The owner went in business with a friend not far from the orchard. There we raised these beautiful blackberries, as well as strawberries, raspberries, watermelons, cantaloupe, pumpkins, decorative gourds, and we raised tomatoes one year. Oh, I forgot we had blueberries bushes that started baring fruit.

We planted these peach trees the first year I worked there year round. I don't remember how long it took to get this crop of peaches and nectarines...not very long at all. Out of probably 8 years it was the only crop that survived our harsh winters. Both my boss and the other guy had health issues; these trees along with five(eta: I don't know why I wrote five--it was more like 10 or 12 ) long, long rows of peach trees that his daughter-in-law and I bud-grafted were bulldozed out. The strawberry rows were plowed out...a sad but happy time for me in so many ways. The strawberries all had drip irrigation, and were planted on small ridges covered through the plastic film that has become popular here in the past years. The drip tube was buried in the ridge under the plastic film layer. One of my many jobs was to get the irrigation going once spring rolled around. The ground was almost pure sand so irrigation was a must. That was the chore that I was not going to miss. The first patch had 50 rows of strawberries that were 400 feet long, then we added to them each year. The rows added were 800 feet long though. I do miss working on the irrigation at all...the only way I survived it was to look at it as one giant puzzle!

I had to walk the row to the end and feel the end of the irrigation line to see if water was reaching the end. As many times as not, it wasn't. So then I would walk back and every so often dig down to find the plastic drip tube. When I found where the water was, then I had to figure out where the leak was--sometimes it was easy to find cause there would be a big, noticeable wet spot. But lots of times there were numerous places where mice had chewed, or maybe a deer had bounded through and the hoof sunk deep enough to cut the line. No, repairing irrigation lines is not my favorite job.

Sampling the fruit was never a chore--one of these peaches would not be a bad thing right now! Since I worked there, fruit bought in stores just never tastes quite as good. And apples are never as good as when you reach and pick one and eat it!