More fresh fruit...

I love summer in Connecticut with all of the fresh fruit and veggies. While Tom and Sandy were still here (August 19th), two of my friends, Kim & Kristi, and all of their kids came over so we could can peaches. I've never done it before so it was a great learning experience for me. We canned two bushels of peaches in 3-4 hours. Not bad considering we had 10 kids between the three of us. The kids had fun playing outside, watching Diego, and trying to catch spiders to feed the frog they found. We let the poor frog go at the end of the day.

My share of the loot.

The next day, (August 20th) Sandy decided she wanted to take home some blueberries so off we went to the orchards to pick some. She later froze them all and managed to take them on the airplane with her. Surprisingly, they were still pretty much frozen by the time she got home.

The kids had great fun.

We grabbed some apples and peaches while we were there.

On Labor day, Jonathan and I decided we had better do something with the profusion of tomatoes in our garden... salsa!

What a beautiful sight.

Jonathan had the dubious pleasure of chopping peppers.

At least this year we remembered the latex gloves. They were much easier to work with than last year's plastic sandwich baggies over the hands.

Isabelle ended up being a great helper. First she peeled the tomatoes that I boiled and iced. Then she helped me deseed them.

The fruits of our labors.

Next up... pear and apple season. Yummy!