jersey - beautiful!

Catherine!
I envy your orchard. On my small town lot I have 4 apple trees now. Such blooms!

Snow Apple/Fameuse, Criterion, Johnathon and and last planted, a Red Gravenstein. I have concord grapes. We press apple juice and I can grape juice. We get a lot of apples from others or we might not have enough to press. I also can applesauce.

I grew up catty corner to the Catholic Church and they had an orchard of old apples. We would sneak over. Most were too tart to eat, but there was a Grimes, my favorite. We had to watch out so the parsonage lady and my Mom didn't see us in the trees, lol!

Once I was way up in the Grimes and the Priest came strolling thru. I now know he pretended not to see me, but boy did I climb higher and made myself small. Heart in chest!

I'm envious of you fruit growers. The closest thing I got to growing fruit were some of those little alpine strawberry plants that I started from seed. I had one that tasted like pineapple. The plants all disappeared from inept gardening.

Cindy,
I grew up with strawberry patches. Dad still has one but the weeds are taking over. Tough field weeds. I still have a container in the freezer from two years ago. It got buried. I need to use it, lol!

I didn't grow up with strawberry patches or fruit trees. Dad's love of wooded property sort of ruled that out. Learning more about home grown fruits from DD. GD and I have experimented with "unusual" fruits here - fruits on a Kousa dogwood and ornamental crab apple and even nuts from a shag bark hickory (which are delicious, btw).
When I've had fruit in the freezer for too long, I make jam out of it so it doesn't get wasted.

Cindy,
It's been years since I've seen a hickory nut tree. Mom used to make hickory pie. We could ask to go to someone's timber and pick them up.
No berries in the timber? He could have planted anything that could spread.
I love timbers for what they are tho. My Grandpa had a small one. No berries

You know you live in the Midwest when your town road leads to gravel.

Got a point about the gravel!

I can take gravel all the way to the next town without seeing asphalt anywhere. Talking about 5 miles or so from my house. If it didn't tear up my tires I would go that way every time.

DH would cringe about chipped car paint.

I have limestone gravel. Doesn't damage the paint unless we get behind a dump truck and they lose some. Main problem is tires get chewed up quickly and if you don't wash your vehicle on a regular basis you're encouraging rust. I learned that one the hard way. Our roads also don't get graded as often as needed and get gravel even less. So they turn into mud and some spots turn into quicksand almost. If you drive a car you cringe. Drive a truck you yell yee haw and hope you know where the worst spots are.

Tire shops and mechanics love us people from the country. We keep them in business.

Pepper,
I walk to the end of my block and I am on gravel, lol!
My question is, where are they getting such filthy gravel these days? It never stops rolling into town with speeders and big grain trucks!
Your gravel sounds like DD's gravel. Ours isn't too bad, but the next county has better roads. They seem to add rock all the time. We have a rock quarry a couple of towns over...

Cindy,
They do don't they! We just got a new truck last March. NO gravel roads till the paint was good and cured! I understand tho.

pepper -
billy - I would think you'd have to have two vehicles - a beater truck for gravel roads and a nicer car for "town" driving.

Only Asphalt and pot holes here , Gravel by the railroad right of ways and a few alleys
Years as in decades ago , it was you knew when the pavement ended suddenly and you were driving in a creek bed or slide side driving on muddy dirt

I live on a gravel road and am about a quarter mile or so from the local highway so it doesn't do us any good. But we do usually have 4 vehicles. 3 trucks and an SUV. Right now it's just 2 trucks but hopefully I get out soon to look at a couple.

pepper - I almost forgot - have you fully recovered from your accident last week?
Jim - thankfully no muddy creek beds here unless I would chose to go off-road which ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Cindy asking pepper about driving off Road ? Hoping she is all okay , so am I ,,
Maybe we should talk about Roll Bar cages , Helmets , and good safety straps ,, Might come in handy even for common winter driving ,,
Pepper ,, only playing some ,, he , he ,,

All good here. No issues from the wreck other than cussing semis out for throwing up water while I'm driving a truck with lousy wipers. I think we're gonna go look at a truck tomorrow and go from there.

Cindy,
We have a beater 1984 CJ 7 jeep that dog tracks and is on it's last legs every year. Every year, a minor repair is made and we are off again. All in all it hasn't cost us much to keep it running. We have a 1963/1/2 Ford Galaxie for highway only and the new truck that is to last us 7 to 10 years before needing repairs, if we're lucky....

Jim,
Yikes! Love that, ''pavement ending suddenly!''

Cindy,
I like an adventure, but no off roading, no steep hills, no ditch ins and outs, no fast corners or parking so close to the edge of a steep ditch because it's usually MY side!!

Pepper,
I'm sorry you have to look for a new truck after all you went thru to get this one. Are you going to get roof lights on this one too? I'm sure there was a proper name for them, but I don't remember it, lol!!

Cab lights. I plan on getting cab lights again in the future and a sliding back window. I think this one doesn't have it so that's a must have for me. I like to dive with windows down.