Outwit, Outplay, Outlast

Despite the challenges brought on by chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, deer and even raccoons, we finished the growing season with one beautiful sunflower plant, a plentiful amount of grapes and a tree full of apples. We thought we outwitted the chipmunks by starting our sunflowers indoors, but other animals (and kids, though they won’t admit it) decimated all but one of our plants. The flowers have been blooming for the past couple of weeks outside our kitchen window.

Sophia and I outwitted the raccoon this year by picking our grapes before he could devour them in his nighttime feedings. Mike actually saw the raccoon last night when he let Daphne outside. Apparently he has been eating well this year, without our grapes, as Mike said he was HUGE! He must have come to check out the if the vines were ready for picking. We did leave a few that weren’t quite ripe, but still have two huge containers. I made the mistake of telling my Dad how many we had picked. Now he is expecting me to make grape jelly. Wish me luck! I haven’t done any canning since I was a kid and helped my Mom. Needless to say, I don’t remember a lot of the details.

We are still waiting for the apples to ripen, but they are coming along nicely. There are about 6 dozen apples on the tree. Most of the apples are high enough up to be out of the reach of deer. Sebastian is looking forward to the harvest since last year there was only one apple on the tree. The year before we picked three. We have quite the bumper crop this year in comparison.