The War of the Roses

I beg your pardon...

I never promised you a rose garden....

You may remember my apple orchard from an earlier blog entry. This year would be it's 75th birthday. Happy Birthday Apple Orchard!  It was planted by my grandfather's brother and takes up 2 acres or so on my farmland on the other side of town.  We don't do too much with it.  Sometimes I ride my horse through there.  A horse can make an apple sound so luscious.   Every couple of years the orchard pulls out all the the stops and gives us a marvelous crop of apples. But mostly, I look at it and think of all the work to be done in there. 

Apple orchards are difficult to mow.  The branches are not pruned and its hard to get a tractor under there.  If a limb falls, you either mow around it, or get out the chain saw and have a bonfire.  If you mow around it, eventually a Multiflora rose will take hold in that spot and engulf the tree.  When the tree dies and falls, you will have a brittle tree carcass in the middle of an eight foot high wall of impenetrable angry thorns, and then you have a real problem.  

Before Number 1

And that is what we had.  A real problem.  We talked about it for a few years.  We knew what had to be done.  We just hadn't worked up the gumption to do it.  My uncle or step father have gone in there and made a few passes with the brush hog so we could at least get to the producing trees.  What we needed was an all out war.

Before Number 2

It has been at least a decade since any cattle were grazed in there and in that amount of time the Multiflora Roses took off.  

Multiflora Rose History

In 1866 the rose bushes were imported as root stock for ornamental roses.  Then, someone got the idea that they would make great hedges for livestock fencing.  Yeah, well...  bad idea.  They are now a VERY invasive species throughout the eastern US.  Once they get started its hard to stop them.  Luckily, they probably do make excellent hedge row fencing for livestock, because once they take over your fence row, there ain't no way you're gettin' to the fence to fix it.  The roses owe you.  They had better keep the cows in.

Before Number 3

Above is the main gateway to the orchard.  The gate would be that large dark mound in the lower left and beyond that is an invisible drainage ditch four feet deep by twelve feet wide with a barbed wire fence on the other side of it.

My Friday day off dawned bright and early.  The first day of Summer.  A beautiful day to work outside.    Temperatures in the mid eighties and sunny skies were forecasted.  I put on a long sleeve denim shirt, some heavy leather gloves, nearly ruined blue jeans and some stiff leather boots.  Ahhh...  summertime.   My stepdad started early in the morning and mowed the high grass up to the worst of it so Tim could get in close and assess the situation.  Assessment:  The rose bushes dwarfed the tractor.  Where would we ever start?  Was this a futile effort?  What were we thinking?

Tim lowered the front end loader and began driving at the wall o' roses from various directions, pushing and crushing the fallen apple trees in their midst.  Within half an hour he had a 50 foot long angry windrow of thorns aimed at a break in the fence out to a small field we had designated for the burn pile.

We were going to win this war.

Some of the roses were three or more inches thick at the roots.  Tim took the time to backhoe these spots out along with what was left of the tree stumps to make the area mowable in the future.

An hour and a half later the front corner was cleared.  in the meantime, Stepdad Richard was mowing.  When the worst of that was done, they both attacked the rose bushes.  They would drive up along a tree trunk and scoop the roots of the rose bush out and then mash it into a ball to be pushed to the pile.  Dead  limbs were chainsawed into manageable pieces and pushed along with.

The white blossoms in this tree are NOT apple blossoms.  They are roses.

In some cases, the rose vines reached 30 feet or more into the trees.  It was my job to pull any of these out by hand.  It was then I discovered a rose pollen allergy that kept me sneezing all afternoon.

After Number 1
The 10 foot wall of roses is history!

After Number 2
Note the dark pink roses along the bank which are leftover from a house that stood here before our family came to the farm over a hundred years ago.  We call them the "Stoddard Roses" after the housewife who likely planted them,

After Number 3  The gate has been pulled out and the deep drainage ditch uncovered.

Halfway through the day we attacked the gateway.  It didn't take long for me to decided that a weak pipe gate, an undermined gatepost, and three decent strands of barbed wire were not worth the hassle to salvage.  I wrenched the gate off it's hinges, Tim reached in with the back hoe and scooped out a grand daddy rose bush, gate, gatepost, wire and all.  Some things are just not worth the trouble.  We can put all that back later after the roses are gone.

Seven hours later, we had an orchard again.  A neighbor on her way to feed calves at the dairy next door stopped and came walking out grinning from ear to ear "Now that's what I call a good day's work!"

The Part We Saved for Later

We did stop about a hundred feet short of the back fence leaving about a fifth of the orchard untouched. We told ourselves we were leaving "habitat" for the birds and the rabbits, but really, we were just darn tired.  And we have enough fuel for a pretty good bonfire, the pile is almost 30 feet square and 10 feet high without adding the large limbs we set aside to cut for campfire wood..  We can always come back and have another go.

Neither Tim nor I, nor my Stepdad want to see any rose bushes for a long time.  

School's Out!

In two weeks we will attend my 25^th high school reunion, and after all these years I still recognize the last day of school.  As I write, just 5 minutes ago, an off schedule school bus caught my attention as it drove past my office window and I realized….  Half Day… School’s out!  No matter how old you get or how far removed you become from the rhythms of childhood I think that still strikes a chord.  The summer is stretched out in front with endless promises and the heart is unfettered by routine.  Suddenly it is easier to get out of bed in the morning and we do not think of returning home until the fireflies light up the tall grass.

This week and next week are shaping up to be the nicest weeks of the year and it’s a perfect day to be the Last Day of School.  I remember my first last day of school like it was yesterday.  Or more particularly, the day after… the first day of my first ever Summer Vacation.  It was 1976 and the Bicentennial was all the rage.  Everywhere you looked there was red white and blue.  I had a brand new pair of red white and blue Keds sneakers and a matching outfit with red shorts and a red white and blue striped tank top.  I awoke on that perfect, bright June morning which was just like today, warm and clear and bright, with a sense of occasion I put on my favorite outfit and slammed out the screen door to the backyard.  My pony was housed in a shed in the back yard and to avoid wetting my new Keds in the dew, I balanced along the stone pavers which outlined a bed of Lily of the Valley along the back of the house.  What I did the rest of the day I don’t remember.  It probably ended up being like any other day, but that first morning sense of adventure is hard to forget.

Mom helps me give my pony a summer bath 

I was five years old and we still lived at the Greenhouse.  The busyness would be winding down as most bedding plants and vegetables had already been purchased and planted, but at my Grandparent’s farm, haying would be in full swing.  The farm was a red barned haven like all old fashioned farms were.  They smelled of clover hay and molasses not silage, and the cows slept on beds of golden straw harvested from one field of oats not sawdust delivered by a truck.  There were shady maples for climbing and calves and kittens for playmates.   Summers on the farm were so perfect that the autumn before, as I hung over the seat back of the old LTD car on the way to the County Fair and my Grandparents asked me if I were excited about growing up and going to school, I answered an honest “No!”  And now it was all behind me and the summer was back.  Yes, that was a magic day.

My Grandfather, Grandmother, and Uncle with the baler in 1976

Today in the garden, things are going well.  I seem to have outlasted both the Cucumber Beetles and the Flea Beetles.   I haven’t had to kill more than two or three bugs a day for the past several days and I have uncovered the eggplants.  They sustained some damage, but not enough to stunt them like last year and we already have a flower!  

The rows of potatoes that I also kept covered so as to remove a large food source for the Flea Beetles are now straining against the top of their floating row covers and will have to be uncovered.

The Potato Patch

The peas are ready to pick in quantities large enough for supper, and I still have 5 portions from last year in the freezer.  I rationed them out, but this is the first time I’ve made it full circle without running out of garden peas.  I also have potatoes left... slightly shriveled, and sprouty as heck, but I had enough to plant this year's crop and I believe we will make it full circle with the potatoes as well.

Purple Pea Blossoms

  One pea plant has unique purple blooms instead of white.  I also have 5 portions of sweet corn left and a gallon bag of green beans which will have to last until August as I plant beans late, after the peas have been pulled.  And I have a Zucchini started!  Let Summer begin.

Why do we do this?

So, in contemplating the resting of the garden in 2012, Tim and I have had a few discussions regarding the purpose of gardening. First of all, it is NOT cost effective. As a whole that is. Granted, you can grow a shit load of green beans from a couple dollars of seed with virtually no other work or worry. But, you can still get Prego s'ghetti sauce from the grocery for a LOT less time and money than you can make your own. And I like Prego. Hasn't killed me yet. I think the tipping point for me was the last weekend I spent dealing with the harvest. I was on my feet all weekend, in and out of the kitchen, keeping an eye on things, countless sinks full of dishes, multiple trips to the compost bin. On Sunday evening I had a quart of tomato sauce, a gallon of frozen beans, and an apple pie. My thought was ~ "the weekend is over, I'm tired, I could have gotten this at the store for under 20 bucks." Doubt began to creep in....



Most of the money we spend gardening is for our own fun. Honestly. And if you like to contemplate the folly of spending copious amount of money on a handful of food, order the book the $64 Tomato and enjoy. So, we spend a lot of cash making ourselves happy in the garden, and another driving force, is the innate and inescapable hunter/gatherer in all of us. Case in point: this year's apple harvest.


My mother went on to gather dozens of bushels more from my orchard and any other orchard in the county that she could gain access to. 60 bushels was the official count, but I don't think she kept very good records. With her daily roamings of the orchard, there are still bushels of apples sitting on her front porch.

She referred to this hoarding as a "temporary obsession to eliminate fruit wastage". But I assure you it is not temporary. To my knowledge, it covers at least three generations and will reoccur annually for months at a time like snow. It's novel at first, but then it consumes everything, and makes getting around inconvenient. In the throes of her fruit obsession, my mother is even driven to call my father, her ex husband, and demand he come and get some pears/apples/whateverwehavebushelsof. And he unloads his unwanted raspberry runners on her. We have come to call this the "fruit exchange". Let the fruiting begin.

The "Mother Load" of Pippins on it's way to the mill

Part of this obsession is driven by location. This would be a lot harder to do if we lived in, say, New York City. In that case, we would most likely gather and hoard street trash instead (and I'm not saying we haven't). We have this stuff just laying around, for one reason or another, and if we don't pick it up, someone is going to have to mow around it.

And because my mother just happens to live half a mile from my orchard to the west, and half a mile from an old fashioned cider mill to the east, the logical thing to do would be to pick up the apples and turn them into cider to give to everybody. And this can be fun. Especially when the cider goes hard. The weeks I spent drinking the gallons I brought to the office were especially pleasant. Particularly after the caps blew off.

My mother was aided and abetted in her "temporary obsession to avoid fruit wastage" by Elsie the Amishwoman. Elsie is a thrifty, hard working woman who will can anything that she can get her hands on. I have given her jars of jelly and such and I can tell you, Elsie returns the jars in the best way possible... full of something else.

Elsie's Larder Part I

Elsie's Larder Part II

My husband has reminded me that we are not Amish. It is not necessary for us to grow our own food. Heck, we're not even farmers. Well, I'm sort of a farmer, but he's not. And we're not Survivalists. If there is a cataclysm, we will not be repopulating the Earth. If the Global Economy collapses, we can survive off the grid pretty easily. I do have some turnip and rutabaga seeds lying around. We're not going to starve right away.

In the mean time, we garden for pleasure. We know that fresh green beans are far superior to the canned ones. It's fun to grow catnip and other herbs. Digging potatoes is oddly satisfying. There are certain specialties, like Wild Plum Jelly, homemade Pickles and Glögg that can only come from your own kitchen and are delightful to share as gifts. Those are the things that we do not fret over the cost and work of making. We garden so we can feel the satisfaction of nurturing a seedling, amending the soil and reveling in the unique taste of a fresh, sun warmed tomato from seeds saved for generations. As long as we can keep that perspective, we will garden on.

An Exciting Day to be a Rock

Imagine you’re a rock. You’ve just been sitting around since the last Ice Age. Doing nothing. Now and then an animal walks by. The animals change over time from wild to domestic, then you start seeing humans occasionally. The humans cut the trees and change the view, but for the most part they leave you alone. Now and then they run into you with something and make a lot of noise. Some of your neighbors have had pieces chopped off or have been pried out of the ground and hauled away. But not you. You’re a big rock.





Then one day a big machine comes and plucks you out of the ground. Talk about surprise! Next thing you know, you’re whizzing along at high speeds of oh, 3 or 4 miles per hour, over hill and dale. Whhheeeeee! That glacier was nothing compared to this. Then you’re dumped on a big pile of rocks. You’ve heard tell about rock piles and now, finally, you’re part of one. And that fetching igneous rock with the elaborate lichens that you’ve been creeping toward for the past, oh ten thousand years or so, is suddenly mere inches away. Yes, indeedy, it is an exciting day to be a rock!


In order to accommodate and encourage the farmer who rents our land, and anyone else who might want to brush hog it now or in the future, we spend a day now and then picking rocks. It's expensive and time consuming enough to keep the land in shape without adding the variable of ruining a blade or worse on a grass covered boulder. This year, the target was the area I've come to refer to as "Hell's Half Acre". I've seldom gone back there, as it's a good hike from any direction. In my childhood I remember it as being little grazed, rarely mowed, and generally avoided, usually chin high in weeds.


A few weeks ago I realised why. I made it back there on my rock scouting expeditions, and found that Bruce had actually managed to brush hog it. And it looked as if the glacier went through last month. I could stand in one spot and count at least a dozen boulders, some sitting right up on top of the ground. Obviously no one has ever picked rock back here. Add to that the fact that it appears that at one point a tornado came through and knocked the woods down because there are so many hillocks which are usually caused by root balls being turned up. This was not a place where the land was carefully cleared of rocks and stumps, and no one has ever plowed it. I can guarantee that! This must be what Bruce was referring to when he said he'd like to see a dozer smooth out some of the pasture. This must be heck to mow.




I took the day off. I was actually looking forward to playing outside all day. Tim drove one of our tractors out, 45 minutes, because we needed the big tractor with the back hoe. I got the easy job. I drive from rock to rock and Tim digs. There is still a lot of on and off and twisting and looking. The next day I simply could NOT turn my head to the left.



We worked for 7 hours (not counting drive time) and gathered 197 rocks ranging from the size of your noggin to the size of your large appliances.

Here is a photo of the BIG rock from our last rock day two years ago. And one of the rock piles from that day.

On to the next one...






Behind us, the boulders littered the pasture like dinosaur poop.

This was fun for the first, oh 4 or 5 hours. Really good fun. Lots better than sitting in an office! Then as 5 o'clock neared, we realised we were never going to see the end of the rocks, and we had two dozen not piled, and no good spot to pile them. We had added to 3 or 4 existing piles, and started 3 of our own in out of the way places. Last time we had piled the rocks near the gates and sold them. This wasn't plausible this time. The price of rocks would not have covered the diesel and time it took to get them near a gate.

So at 5 o'clock when Tim asked if that was all for today, I fibbed and said yes. There are two other areas we didn't get to, but those rocks have been there for a really long time, and they will still be there next year. Along with whatever else heaves up through with the frost. My uncle said one year he counted how many field stones went into a trailer load, did some calculations on the acreage, and estimated that my grandfather had moved over 750,000 in his lifetime. With those numbers, we've only just begun.

Imagine doing this without a tractor. I'm a pretty active person, and Tim works outside all day long, so we were ready for a day picking rock. I remembered to take some Aleve before I, uh leaved the house. We covered the outer path of about 50 acres. There was a lot of rock rolling and rock picking up. Some of them we just pried out of the ground with a spud bar. How this works is you are standing around, leaning on the bar (used to help roll the rock into the bucket) waiting for whomever is driving to get back from dumping a load of rocks on the rock pile, when you spot another rock hiding in the grass. You take careful aim and jab the bar into the earth next to the rock and pry. You watch the earth around to see how much of it moves, and by this you calculate the approximate size of the rock and your chances of getting it out by hand.

Sometimes you are still jabbing and prying when the tractor comes back, and you gratefully step aside and make room for the back hoe and the front end loader. My grandfather had no backhoe and no front end loader. He had a tractor and a trailer. His father before him had a stone boat and a team of horses. The folks before my family likely had a stone boat and a team of oxen. We have found ox shoes in the fields. Imagine clearing rock all day with a pry bar, a stone boat, and a team of oxen. It would take more than Aleve to get me through that!

After Apple Picking

This is going to be a banner year for apples in our neck of the woods. Every wild apple tree you pass on the side of the road is loaded with apples. We have a Yellow Transparent, a Cortland, and a Macintosh in our backyard, but the crows and the squirrels stripped all but a couple of dozen apples off the trees. Not to worry, on my farmland we have an Orchard, and I was pleased to discover that there were much more than enough apples for us.

My Great Uncle Doug planted the orchard in 1938. When Great Grandpa Fred came on the farm in 1905, there were old orchards (as was common on farms then) on both "upper" and "lower" farms. Some farmers in the 19th century and turn of the century grew a lot of apples. Some were sent to apple driers in nearby Ashville and put in barrels and exported to Germany.


Photo of the Apple Drier in Asheville from "Chautauqua County - A Pictoral History"

The orchard on my farm was across the cow lane from where it is now, on a two acre field. The severe winters of the 1930's and age killed off the old orchards. Some winters were so cold the trunks of trees would freeze and burst and that sounded "like rifle shots" according to my Grandfather.

Uncle Doug planted the new orchard with more modern varieties. It was one of very few, if not the only orchard in Busti planted that late. He ordered the trees from the Stark Brothers  mail order nursery. My uncle Norman used to have to count the trees and report the number along with how many bushels of apples he saved and how many he took in for cider to the government.

By studying an aerial photo I’ve determined there may have originally been as many as 84 trees, and fewer than 30 remain alive. My Grandfather never trimmed or sprayed it. One year neighbors with a cider mill rented it and trimmed it up and tried to put it in commercial condition for a year or two. I believe my Great Grandfather used to graze sheep in there to keep the grass down, and I remember my Grandfather keeping a couple of hives of honey bees in the back. Other than that, the orchard has been left to it's own devices and is in need of some clean up.

My uncle tells that in the 1970's they used to bag up many bushels of apples and have cider made in several batches. They brought it home in milk cans but put it in big 20 gallon earthenware crocks and kept it out in the snow to have cider into December. I remember them laying tarps under the trees to catch the windfall apples.

My Grandmother also canned and froze cider in gallon jugs: glass for canning and plastic for freezing. We drank a lot of cider! We also had applesauce made from the Yellow Transparents, and dried apples dried on cookie sheets beside the wood stove. My sister and I learned to make apple dumplings, and that was all the rage for a year or two.

They stored apples in baskets in the root cellar. A few times in the winter someone would have to go through the remaining apples in the cellar and cull the rotten ones. I remember the cellar smelling of dried leaves and the faint smuttiness of rotting apples.

The past few weeks I have been keeping an eye on the trees, and have been tormented by loads of ripe apples falling to the ground to be enjoyed by the deer and woodchucks. There are McIntosh, Cortland, a Greening for cooking, Double Red Delicious which are still starchy and hard, Red Spies, Northern Spies and one King tree which is covered with large pale apples.

These are BIG trees. You can only reach a few from the ground, and my attempts at picking them from the back of my horse (who knew I was picking apples and therefore wanted to help) were frustrating at best. Around here, if you want to get to something up high, you grab a Kubota!

I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
~Robert Frost

All this bounty makes us greedy. We hate to see it go to waste. But of course, there are only so many apples you can eat or cook in a week. So Tim immediately began to think of cider. He doesn't even drink cider! I drink plenty of cider in the fall. I began by warming it and adding a shot of Captain Morgan Rum for a spicy drink. There is a restaurant that we frequent who has put me on to a few other combinations. Add Butterscotch Schnapps for a drink that tastes like warm apple pie. Add Peach Schnapps and the peach almost totally takes over for a wonderful zingy peach drink.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking;

~Robert Frost

I actually do have an antique orchard ladder (they are narrow at the top) but that would have been useless in this situation. Mom's apple picker DID come in very handy. Although I knocked off quite a few, sending them pelting down on Tim and Mom's heads.

Apple Orchard Gothic
Mom and I pose with our bountiful harvest.

There's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now
~Robert Frost

I talked to my dad the next day and at Tim's insistence I asked him what had become of PaPaw's cider press in Kentucky. He didn't know, but he said he had one in the garage that had followed him home from a garage sale. It needed a new drum, but I told him I would stop by and see it because I know you can buy the new drums online.

How long do you think it takes a guy to load something very heavy into his truck and drive 7 miles? Before I knew it, my father was hollering my name through the screen door, and this....

....was sitting in our driveway. Never balk at a chance to get rid of some junk.

The mechanics of it are clean, well oiled, and crank with ease. It has a grinder which Tim didn't think would do much in the way of chopping an apple, until we dropped a couple in and were rewarded with a pile of apple shards on the driveway. An efficient grinder it certainly is!

But this will probably be next year's project. Tim naturally wants to sand blast it and pretty it up, and we still need a replacement drum, a pusher (for lack of a better word) for the top, and I'll be sewing some sacks to go in the drum.

After all that excitement, I began to cook apples. I made both applesauce and apple butter (more on that another time). And this is just the beginning! There are more apples ripening every day!

Thank You for the Cow Paths

Dear Farmer who rents my land;

Thank you for the cow paths. When I walked the pasture today, marking boulders for removal, I was delighted to find that your cows have made paths. Granted, they are not in the same places that my grandfather's cows had them, but they are nice just the same. I am hoping with time they will become as deeply etched among the buttercups as I remember them and that they will fill up with the fine powder of dirt that feels good to toes or becomes slick in the rain and make a satisfying smack under bare feet.

There is a lot of work history in that land. There are pits that springs have carved around piles of rocks stacked by men generations ago who foolishly thought they could stop the erosion. Every now and then I come across an unexpected gully opening up beneath my feet in seemingly flat land, but most of the creek banks still feel familiar as they did 30 years ago.

I am surprised that the old fence line where we took out the wire this spring has blended in so well, and that the new fence line has already aged to match it's surroundings as if a clever decorator "distressed" it with golden rods and dried grass to make it look old. The pasture has already moved on and forgotten our hard work with a casual shrug at the whims of humans and their boundary lines. I think my newer coils of wire look nice on the old wire pile.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I had noticed the improvement. The pasture looks good, and somehow satisfied to be grazed by cows again. It has been nearly a century since my family arrived, and close to two centuries since settlers brought the first cows here. I wonder what will be here in another hundred years. I hope they keep the cow paths.

Sincerely,
Your Farmer Neighbor

A week ahead of schedule?

The tomatoes are in. Usually I wait until Memorial Day weekend, but the weather has been nice, with temps in the fifties each night (for almost two weeks now). I realised last weekend that I needed to get serious about hardening off my tomatoes. I put them out on the northeast corner of the house on Wednesday where they are sheltered from the wind. Wednesday and Thursday were overcast, but yesterday they stood up to their first half day of sun with very little if any bleaching. The corner I use get's full sun until about 2pm which works out well. I thought I was sunk on Wednesday when I noticed at the office the breeze was coming stiffly all day from the east, but when I got home I was pleased to see 18 straight seedlings with no windburn at all. In fact, I'm really please with my transplants this year. I got them timed just right and they are all healthy and vigorous. I didn't even break any this time. I also planted my first crop of bush beans. They could have gone in two weeks ago like just about everything else.

The onions are growing well.

Two rows of peas with a row of mixed radishes and carrots in the middle. The radishes are just starting to bulb. The pot of violas I won in a game at the Mother's Day brunch at the nursing home. I would have left them with Tim's Mom to brighten her room, but she is very allergic to pollen. I can't imagine having that misfortune!







The newest thing that's catching my eye in the greenhouses this spring are calibrocha (Million Bells Petunia) planted in mixed baskets which I think is a great idea. This red, orange and yellow one dresses up the corner of the garden picking the colors out of my bench cushions.

I spent a couple of hours Saturday morning getting the Amish going on the fence again. As I was walking back down the fence line, this picture caught my eye. The work team waits patiently with little Levi (who has bruised ribs from a fall on the stairs) lounging in the seat under his hat while Irven pounds posts. They don't mind if we discretely take photos, but they won't pose because that would be vain. Mom printed out my fencing blog so Elsie could read it. Elsie smiled broadly when she told me she thought I did a good job writing it. Then she sent me home with a bowl of rhubarb crumble!





My Mom took this picture later in the day. What fun!!!