Squirrels & Grapes

Its a nice balmy morning, not too cool not too warm and there's a good breeze going. I retook photos of the Malabrigo in natural light and am much happier (so that's what happened if you saw them late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning).

I was still at the computer and could hear a blue jay squawking its annoyance at something when I heard an answering chitter - the suicidal squirrel. Norbert and Nessa of course both heard it and there was the resulting 'charge!' and accompanied frenzied barking to make sure that the crazy squirrel wasn't in their yard.

I followed at a much more leisurely pace to check out if the squirrel really was in the yard so I could then quiet down the barking. A quick check of where the dogs were identified where I should also be looking, but not in our yard, over the fence. The squirrel was spotted in the outer branches of the filbert tree and still having a 'conversation' with the jay.

Fast forward twenty minutes or so and William looks out the kitchen window to see Norbert still out in the backyard. Our little couch potato had assigned himself 'squirrel watching duty':

Nessa of course came out to check what I was doing and then checked in with Norbert:



Since the squirrel still hadn't decided to tempt its fate by coming over onto the fence our or trees I decided to check the status of the grapes. They're coming along nicely. I picked a small bunch of red ones for munching. Here's what the rest look like:


I'm going to have to set up the apple corer/peeler/slicer tomorrow and get started on the apples that will be saved for future: dumplings/pies/tarts/etc. Brandon still needs to put together his apple press for the others to become cider. Not hard cider though. Check out the link I have for the Pioneer Woman, she has some apple recipes that look sinfully delicious I want to try out.