We are having a string of beautiful days. Warm but not hot, low humidity, blue sky with puffy white clouds. Today we took advantage of the beautiful day and drove up to Michigan to find some peaches. I wasn’t too happy with my peaches last year; today we tried some new farms. At our first stop in Berrien Springs, the lady had a variety of peach I had never heard of. She said they were excellent for freezing and canning, neither of which I planned to do. They were in cold storage so hard to get any peach smell. I passed. We drove to Flavorland Farm in Baroda. This was a do-it-yourself operation at a family farm. A jar where you put your money. They did have some small containers of peaches with a sign saying Scarlet Prince. Again a variety with which I was unfamiliar, and there was nobody to ask. But I bought a small quantity.
According to the internet, this variety is freestone and an excellent all-around peach. Kind of large for eating out of hand though. Flavorland’s web page said tree-ripened and they do look ready to eat, but tonight we had sliced peaches with whipping cream poured over them. This is a somewhat firm peach, but I would say these needed a few more days to fully ripen. The pits do not come away from the flesh fully either, but reports this year are that Michigan freestones are not coming out as they should. I think I will bake a peach cobbler Friday or Saturday.
I really wanted to find some Red Havens, the variety I have purchased the past few years. We drove north to Coloma and at Fruit Acres farmstand we found the Red Haven. These definitely are not ready to eat, but that is good as the Scarlet Prince will be gone by the time the Red Haven ripen.
This was our first longish trip depending on the navigation system in our Avalon car. Since we were in rural or small town areas, the GPS was a big help. When I input the destination, it said some roads were not indexed and verified. LOL. Those turned out to be my own street and the street that leads out of our development. At some point, we will need to pay the fee to update the maps. Our Garmin has lifelong free updates. We might use it as backup for awhile if we run into trouble. The nav system in the car had a pleasant voice. If one deviated from the route, a text message appeared on the screen saying “calculating route” but there was none of the “recalculating” voice that the Garmin uses. It doesn’t display the speed limit like the Garmin, but gives estimated time of trip in miles and minutes. I know there are features we didn’t try yet.
On Sunday August 2nd my husband was stung by a wasp. We have seen them flying in and out of his large storage chest for wood for the past few years. He said they never bothered him. This time the paper honeycombed nest was half full of white objects which I assumed were eggs. When he opened the lid they felt under attack and one flew right into his jaw and stung.
We had problems for many weeks with yellow jackets in an underground nest near our rose bush in the front yard. We sprayed, Grace Village staff sprayed, but they would come back and start a hole a few inches away from the sprayed hole. Their constant coming and going was across the path from the drive to the porch.
The last time we reported this, we expected maintenance to come back and spray again. Instead, a pest control van drove up, a man started suiting up in protective gear. My husband told him about the problem on the patio. He had some kind of hose he put in the yellow jacket nest and white stuff was on the ground from the canister when he finished. No more yellow jackets. My husband had sprayed the wasp nest and it had fallen into the chest from the lid. This guy found it and took it away. He sprayed something throughout the chest. He also found a mud daubers nest and treated it. He verified that the white objects in the wasp nest were eggs. Good to have the pests and their nests gone. I know people don’t like pesticide use, but we don’t like being stung.
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