Is There A Fruit Bat Listening?

 The Crab Apples have their own agenda now....  Skins splitting, exposed flesh going brown and mealy, fruits falling prematurely, and because the tree is leaning so far to the right, with immediate danger of collapsing, my own guess is that the tree has made an Executive Decision to survive, and shedding fruit like a Mad Thing, rather than break its' own back - and I don't blame it.

Ever the helpful little soul that I am, I've been harvesting as many as I possibly can in my spare time..... juicing them in my Magimix (other food processors are available kids), and chilling the juice until needed. This potentially cuts down on the simmering of the acidic little beauties and lessens the making of an almighty mess round the kitchen with pulp and jelly-bags dripping all over The Funny Farm, because that tedious process bores The Pants off me with a capital B, and if there was an incling of further mess in the kitchen, or anywhere in The Funny Farm Children, Trousers wouldn't hesitate to leave home.

So!  I've set up a multitude of dripping jelly bags ALL round the house?

I've yet to decide whether to freeze today's Raspberries, to later thaw for maximum juice, or to bottle them fresh now.  Freeze is my Final Decision.....

 Ever grateful of eloquently being preached to (and at) in English, French and Latin, growing up in Boarding Convent Schools less than ten miles from home, is prolly where I get this kind of Joseph & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat Seven Years of 'Feast and Famine', and thinking an amazing harvest one year, may indicate a famine for the next seven.
But I was also A Girl Guide, and I seem to remember that I earned A Robin Badge, but can't for the life of me remember exactly why and what for now?  Was it that I managed to sew the badge onto my own uniform without help?
I deserve A Medal for the decades of Curtains and Roman Blinds that I've made for my own homes since, and gladly not a Girl Guide any longer, so no need to turn up to one of Catherine Tate's Twirling Meetings, eh?

Thankfully, having followed in the footsteps of my friend Gloria, and bought a Waterbathing Wotsit to extend the shelf-life of everything that I preserve from a couple of months to The Full Twelve, if Mother Nature has a bit of a dodgy year next year, I'll have covered my @rse.

Now this next photo shows the 'Invincible' Pear Tree that I planted last year, so-called, because it allegedly sends out Double Bubble Blossom, so that you never ever miss a crop of pears if a late frost happens to bite you on the bottom at the last moment....
There are so many ruddy Pears now, that I've had to prop them, and the whole tree up, and there wasn't even a hint of a late frost - so I'm getting incredibly scared now for next years' crop.

 Talking of fruiting boughs breaking and a plethora of fruit, the Autumn Bliss Raspberries are beginning to wear me down, with 2-4lb. of fruit on a daily basis, and up to an hour of my time to harvest them, most of which is spent bent-double to detect the ripe berries under the uppermost leaves.
Which led me to wonder whether it would 'distress' the canes at all if I stripped them of their uppermost leaves to reveal the fruits as they ripen, as I've done here to show you, because, other than make them more vulnerable to the birds, it would make it easier for the bees to pollinate the blossoms, and easier for me to identify the ripest fruits and pick them in their prime.

I promise you, if you've not tried it at the tender age of 50, harvesting ripe raspberries for an hour semi-upside down in a thicket when you can't see beyond your nose without a pair of magnifying glasses, you'll know exactly why I'm trying to push this particular boundary!

With another Lumbar Injection looming on Monday's horizon for my Prolotherapy treatment, it remains to be seen whether I'm going to please my Doctor, or have cocked it up again?  And I mean that with huge respect, because he knows that by the very nature of what I do, I am never going to sit still.
If I do have to have another Injection, I'll hold my hands up and rest for the rest of the day, for a change.

Monday afternoon, I'll telephone the offices of Ken Muir, Fruit Guru, and put the Raspberry Question to them for an answer, unless there's A Fruit Bat listening to save me the phonecall?