That's neat.

So they're little dried pieces of cranberry pulp?

My parents had a house fire when I was in college. They rebuilt but man, the contents was nearly a total loss. That is really hard to cope with, lisah. I feel for your friends.

Owen has started writing an independent research paper for music class. Nothing that is required, he just felt like writing it. We asked him what he was writing about. Freddy Mercury. I had no idea he was born in Zanzibar.

So they're little dried pieces of cranberry pulp?

Yup -- pulp and peel (?) whatever the outside of the cranberry is called.

Shell? Husk?

That's pretty cool, Jesse. No waste!

I had no idea he was born in Zanzibar.

Me either!

Sometimes I want Owen to be my best friend. He'd be the coolest best friend EVER.

Brenda, did you make it to the show? I had a meeting after or I would have looked for you.

Today began with the sun shining into my eyes through the unshaded second-floor window of my brother's farmhouse. I got a cup of tea and then we took the dogs for a 3-mile run down empty farm lanes, where you can see for miles from the top of a rise and none of the hills look nearly as steep from a distance as from close up. It's mostly open land, but the dells and waterways are sneaky, and full of trees, and sometimes you don't see them until you're right on them.

After a shower, we went out to pick apples. From just two trees, we got nearly four bushels of apples, and two or three bushels of rotted falls to put in the compost heap. I climbed up into the biggest tree, which hadn't been pruned in too long, and used the long-handled apple-picker, and when that didn't work, I jumped up and down on the branches and hoped not to bean my SIL on the head. That was far more work than I expected.

After a lunch of apples and peanut butter, we went to an open house: the release of a two-year apple brandy at an orchard around the corner. They had a little spread of snacks, a big chocolate cake, and both cider and brandy to sample. Also many hundreds of apple trees, a herd of English heritage hogs, and an enormous half-grown Great Pyrenees to keep the deer away from the apple trees. It was like a dinner party, except everyone was in jeans and barn jackets, and nearly everyone was a farmer of one sort or another.

Then we went back to my brother's farm and I took one of the dogs (the one who barfed up a sock this morning, sigh) out for a long ramble, and we went all the way out to the back of the property, through the woody dell I call Narnia (and my SIL calls Brigadoon). There are black walnut trees everywhere, and the hard green and/or black tennis-ball size nuts nearly carpet the pathway. Out at the very back of the property are two or three more apple trees, which last year had a sweet pink apple that I really liked, but I couldn't find them. Tomorrow, maybe.

It was 90 degrees in Oakland today, but here it was cold enough I had to borrow a wool sweater and a barn jacket from my SIL. It's grey and occasionally drizzly, and the trees are turning everywhere. The sumac by the barn is brilliant red and maroon, and the maples are yellow.

We had pasta and salad for dinner and now the dogs are sleeping at my feet and the radio softly plays folk music from Wisconsin Public Radio in the kitchen. It's been a really nice day.

Consuela, that sounds like an utterly fabulous day. It made me happy just to read about it.

That sounds glorious, save the weather.