Frosty morning

Just a little reminder this morning that spring may be here, but the warm weather comes and goes. The temperature when I left for coffee this morning was only 25 degrees. My friends and I refuse to get our winter coats back out of the closet, but I did wear my leather gloves.

This beautiful cutting board was a gift from my husband’s friend, Don O’Neil. We live in a small town and the barter system is alive and well. When my husband, Don, decided to tap trees and cook maple syrup his friends all pitched in to help. His friend, Tim, supplied wood for the cooker which he had picked up from a lumber mill. There were small pieces of various woods that were scrapped. His friend, Jim, let him tap the maple trees on his property and helped him gather sap. His friend, Don, tapped trees and gathered sap. When Don saw the scraps of lumber he sorted through them and picked out some of the better cuts of wood. Don is an excellent woodworker and today surprised me with this cutting board that he made from those wood scraps. DOn is lucky to have such good friends. And Don is always there for them when they need help with fixing things, welding, or projects. It’s nice to have good friends.

There is nothing like a homemade apple pie. Especially when the apples came from your own apple tree in your front yard. We have a large crabapple tree out front. Now you know we couldn’t get apples for pies from that tree. You are wrong. Many years ago Don grafted branches from several different kinds of apples onto that tree. We always laughed because when the tree blossomed in the spring it was full of soft pink blooms, but in places there were white flowers from the grafts.


Soon those branches grew large and began to produce apples. Two years ago the tree was prolific and I gathered bags full of apples. I peeled and slices them, added sugar and cinnamon and froze them for pies. Yesterday I took one of the remaining bags and made a pie. It was absolutely delicious!