At the Welcome Center today, my boss brought me a bag of apples that someone had picked off their tree. Most of them were wormy or bruised, but I cut the bad parts out and made a big batch of applesauce. I squeezed lemon into it and didn’t add any sugar. Mark and I like tart things and we each had a small bowl of it while it was still hot. It was so good!

Before we left home last fall, Mark did a lot of pruning and put all the dead branches in a pile in our back yard. We have wanted all summer to burn those, but the weather hasn’t been conducive or we haven’t had time. Today, Mark went and got a burn permit and we waited until the sun went down so that it wouldn’t be too hot.

As soon as I was able to get out there with Mark, I picked up the hose and put out any sparks that landed in the grass. Mark kept going back and forth dragging branches to the fire and throwing them on. After a while, I could tell he was beginning to wear out, so I started bringing the branches to him.

He and I were both being viciously attacked by the mosquitoes and I eventually said, “I’m sorry, but I have to go in.” He told me to go ahead.

When I got in, I had bites all over me and I had to take my wedding ring off because I had one under it that was swelling so badly, I was in danger of losing circulation to that finger! I’m going to be a mess for my job at the Noble House tomorrow, but it feels good to have that stack of branches burned up.