Well, summer is coming to a close. That means that we start to harvest and put away our produce for the year. This year we had the first fruit from our urban orchard. That's right, we got a pear!
Ok, it's not the prettiest pear you'll ever see. But it's the only pear we got this year. One pear tree blossomed, and the other did not. Somehow, one blossom got pollinated. Despite a very rough year with early thaw, late frost, a hot, dry summer and a brutal attack from pearleaf blister mites, our solitary pear survived! What you see in the photo above is the good side. The other side had some mite damage. The good news is, the mites don't really hurt the fruit other than cosmetic blemishes. After the requisite ripening period, we cut the pear in half and shared it. We both agreed that it was, hands down, the best pear we have eaten. It was pretty amazing. Here's hoping next year is more productive.
This summer saw the planting of some new things in the yard, including our apricot tree. With that, our urban orchard now contains: pears, plums, cherries, apricots, blueberries, kiwi fruit, grapes, cranberries and raspberries. Throw in the garden produce, a patch of rhubarb and the odd morel or two, and we've got a pretty productive little quarter acre.
After UGM, Emily was ready for some time off, so we had a long weekend this past weekend. We went up to Wisconsin Dells to play mini golf at Pirate's Cove (we tied). After that, we had lunch at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty, followed by a trip on the Upper Dells boat tour. It was a good day.
On Saturday, Adam rode his bike to Devil's Lake with some friends. We took the long way to get there, hoping to stretch it to a metric century (100 km). Unfortunately, there were 20+ mph winds, complicating matters significantly, and slowing our pace to a crawl. We cut off the last 10 miles, making it to the park in 50 miles (80k) instead. Oh well. It was a nice ride with some good friends.
On Monday, we went to Olbrich Botanical Gardens. It was a great time of year to be there. There were a lot of late-summer plants blooming, and we caught a flock of cedar waxwings eating crabapples. We also saw a lot of butterflies. Some pictures of the butterflies are below:
It was a good weekend. It won't be long now before it's time to cover the hoophouse, plant the garlic, and pull the last of the green tomatoes off the vines. It's a sad time of year for a gardener, but it's just part of life.
