Alpine monsoon

Not to be outdone by CMO's monsoon yesterday we got one in Alpine today. Sure wish I'd have seen the CMO event instead of the Alpine one though. It seemed so intense here with 1.4" that I can't even imagine how it was at CMO with 1.8" These photos were taken in town right after it stopped raining.

Zucchini took a battering but will bounce back nicely in no time.

There's good news and bad news on the apples. The good news is that they turn yellow and get softer and sweeter if you leave them on the tree. The bad news is that we've picked them green all these years. Never picking another green apple again. My husband picked some green ones this morning before I caught him, but now he knows not to do it anymore. He has to help with cutting up the green ones. Hurts my thumbs too much. But we won't have green ones in the future. And that is good news also because we won't have to deal with drying apples while we're bogged down in stone fruit.

You're probably saying, "Duh, everyone knows apples ripen on the tree," but when I bought the tree I specifically bought a green tart apple, so when they started getting pecked by birds and falling to the ground, we assumed they were as "ripe" as they were going to get. But this year I determined to leave them longer just to see what would happen and yesterday I found a yummy yellow one on the tree. I love tart apples, just not THAT tart.

After the rain I walked around the ponds and was amazed that the trunk on the red oak tree was green. I posted it on a plant group and someone said that's lichen, and hummingbirds use it in their nests. Cool! It looks like the actual bark turned green to me but I'll yield to others more knowledgeable.