Apples and lemons

Our fuji apple tree I've posted about here dropped an apple this week. An insect had tasted a bit of it before we got to it, but most of it was delicious! I have a good memory of a huge apple tree in the backyard of a house I lived in up until kindergarden in San Jose. My great grandma was living with our family during that time and I remember her making chunky apple sauce with apples from that tree. Maybe that's what was in the back of my mind when we picked out her fruit tree. The fact that Maggie tried the first apple from the tree planted to celebrate her birth and life is perfect in my book.

As we pick our apples this fall, our lemon tree is gearing up for winter. I wish I saw blood oranges on the other tree, but nope, just lots of bright green new growth. We have lots of little green lemons and we're excited to watch them grow. Maggie was pointing to them, so she's taken notice. Michael is worried she will pick them before they are ready. On this note, our cherry tomato plants in the garden were a great tool for teaching ripe v.s. not ripe. For the most part Maggie got it right by picking ripe tomatoes but we made it tricky for her by planting yellow, red, and heirloom cherry tomatoes (the heirlooms are a beautiful mix of magenta/pink/green-they totally threw me off at first). Every now and then we find an unripe green one in her hands. A couple times I've been gardening and have lost track of her for a minute or two. It's unusually quiet, that's when I know to go looking. Then I find the evidence of where she has been and it makes me smile...a tomato seed or two have dripped onto her shirt. I love this girl.