Lorena checked the apples in our trees in the back yard and found that we probably could have (should have) been harvesting them for a couple of weeks now. She bought herself the business end of an apple picker pole and attached it to the end of the very long pole, Carolyn C. give to her as a gift about a decade ago. I have to tell you that has been about the most useful gift she has ever gotten. She has used it for a gazillion things and now it is receiving double duty both for apples and 
dusting of very high places. Now she is a state of high applesauce production mode. We need to get Bob over here soon because we have entirely too many of them. I think the pruning we had our yard crew perform in February really did the trick. So far we have gotten peaches (crazy sweet), pears–really small, but tasty, and now the apples. We really need to get set up to put a garden in which mostly just means we need to level out a spot, put up a really high fence to keep out the deer, and maybe put in a raised bed.
Day: August 23, 2018
The first gazillion times the neighbor’s tomcat came by for a visit, Kiwi threw a hissy-fit (literally). It has been tapering off for awhile and now is to the point where the neighbor cat, Jack, sits outside the screen door while Kiwi lounges somewhere within view and they stare at each other (or not) for hours on end.
Lorena bought a fire pit at Ace Hardware yesterday. We checked out the ones at Walmart, Home Depot, and several other places, but this was the best we could find for how much money we wanted to pay. I think it will work well. We are hoping in inaugurate it sometime this coming weekend. Maybe even roast some weenies. We have not decided yet whether we want to put it on the deck or just use it on the concrete pad beside the kitchen. Probably the latter–we have a hose right there in case anything gets out of hand.