Apple-ocalypse

As I was making my way home from my weekly tussle with the carts and other shoppers at the grocery store this morning, I was rather taken by the sight of four little girls. They were enjoying the morning sunshine, jumping on a trampoline in their backyard and were nothing short of a vision in their bright shorts and t-shirts. It was like something out of a story book or a really good insurance commercial. I half-expected the whole scene to go into slow motion and be accompanied by the lyric strains of a single violin.

Springtime in Maine...'tis truly a lovely thing.

Except it is not Spring. It is Fall. Late October, to be specific. And temperatures in the 70's for extended periods are not the norm. In fact, it is downright strange and smacks of that apocalypse I keep mentioning.

We are reaching the point where I am periodically gathering small groups of young whippersnappers around me, taking up The Talking Stick and telling of The Before Time when there were distinct and easily identified seasons. I tell of things like mittens and warm woolly socks. Their little whippersnapper eyes go wide when I speak of how, as a child, I used to walk to school uphill, (both ways) in the snow, year-round with nothing but the soup in my Bobby Sherman, glass insulated thermos between me and a frozen grave.

Note: The aforementioned Talking Stick is a Brittany, size 17 straight needle as I can't seem to find the other one and it seems a waste to not find a use for a Brittany size 17 straight needle. Those of us from The Before Time were forced to use all parts of the animal and were frugal in all things.

In an effort to remind myself of the season so that, when Fall returns for real, I won't be thrown into a shock so deep that there will be no recovering, I decided that I should do something Apple-Related. That is not only seasonal, but will help me in coping with my Apple Amnesia. This affliction is little known, barely researched and one for which there will be no telethons. The symptoms involve purchasing apples even though you already have apples. Then buying more apples. Soon, you have many, many apples. You think you will eat them. But they are apples. They are not cookies. I can eat more cookies than I can apples.

I have a lot of apples.

I broke out my new and very fun apple peeler/corer/slicer thingie and proceeded to empty out the produce drawer in the fridge. In short order, I had a whole bunch of the little buggers all ready for dehydrating. In not so short order, (dehydrating takes a while) I had this:

The fruits of my labors! (hee-hee!!)

I probably should have taken a picture before the now leathery fruits were subjected to further torment in the Food Sucker (aka The Vacuum Sealer Thingie). But, you get the idea. These will keep well in the dark cupboards and I have now bought myself a little time to decided what the heck I am going to do with them. Dried fresh apples are actually rather yummy so I suspect there will be a few smuggled out of the bag before too much longer, though. I may try to do a few more to make trail mixes as holiday gifts...we'll see.

Lest you think that it has been all apple-drying and force feeding groups of children stories about my long ago childhood days, I will tell you that there has been some knitting here. Like I said, the dehydrator takes a long time and it's not like I was going to just sit there and watch the apples age before my very eyes. The Invisibility Shawl is behaving beautifully now that I have come up with a better system for checking my work on previous rows. And the spinning wheel even came out of the corner to creak its way through some whirling of the wool. It was a big day here at the farm! (if you expand your definition of "farm" to include a small, second floor condo, grocery store apples and superwash wool roving, that is.) I'm feeling that rather smug sense that comes from preparing for the dark days of winter while the sun still shines.

And by "dark days of winter" I mean "that season that used to come after Autumn back before the apocalypse forced us all outside to our trampolines in shorts."

SA