Nectarines and Peaches

My friend's parents have a beautiful orchard on the foothills of Maple Mountain. She invited us up there this fall to pick peaches and nectarines. It was great! I love picking fruit and though the girls preferred to play we got plenty to take home. The nectarines are my favorite- so sweet!

Little Lucy on my back- she didn't like it when the branches kept getting in her face but I couldn't put her down because there were hornets everywhere eating fallen fruit.

A couple of lovely pickers. Grace, Lili, hmmm. Where's Kate? Like I said the thrill didn't last long for them. She was gone into the woods with her friends by this time.

Some of our bounty. These have been much enjoyed and still occupy half of our freezer.
Thanks to my friend!!!

Prepare

We have been told for over 70 years to get food storage and now I think some people are beginning to understand why. I hope more people start following. Those few who have it won't be able to sustain the rest if food suddenly isn't available. We are in a much more fragile situation than during the great depression because of our way off life. I am hearing of many people who have lost their jobs or are expecting to be laid off. Unfortunately many of those people do not have food stored. I believe that there is no mechanism to recover from our economic problems and so things will only get worse. I heard somewhere that the church only has enough food for about 4% of the church membership. If another 10 percent have a year's supply I would be surprised. What about the rest? A sobering thought. We may do more than just think about it soon.

Are you on Santa's naughty list?

Kate asked me that the other day. She had watched "Elf" shortly before and I think was trying to understand the whole nice/naughty list thing. I told her that Santa doesn't have adults on his lists, only children. We talked about why Buddy's dad was on the "naughty" list (because he only cared about money) and that the movie wasn't real. I reflected on this for the whole rest of the day. Why did I tell her that the movie wasn't real and basically that Santa's list is real? The whole Santa thing kind of annoys me. I like pretending but I don't like lying and there seems to be too much fuzziness between the two with Santa. Lili already knows that we play Santa. If Kate asks I think I will just say, "It's fun to pretend there's a Santa." We all need to play Santa for others anyway right? We are going to help a family in need this year and so maybe that will come up. I kind of hope so.