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I love the change of seasons. Each change brings a kind of excitement with it. What will we get this year? Autumn is particularly beautiful, with all the color and the smells of ripe crops. Right now it's apples. The smell of apples is in the air in many places. They haven't started corn harvest yet, but I love the smell of fresh picked corn. It reminds me of my childhood.
Summer wasn't good to us this year here on the ranch. I'm looking forward to burning off the garden this time. Good riddance. I lost a three year old apple tree to ambrosia beetles, another is badly infected with cedar apple rust. I finally surrendered in my fight with anthracnose in my raspberries, burned them, and I'm starting over in a different place. The tomatoes came down with Verticilium earlier than usual, but we had an ample harvest. Bacterial wilt got both plantings of cucumbers, voles ate the asparagus roots and a few of the pepper plants. I try to plant double what I'll need of everything, one for me and one for the critters, but this year the critters took more than their share. Still, we filled the freezers and gave tons of food away.
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