Sunday Afternoon

After prayer time, Sunday school, worship service, and snack, Adam is tired most Sundays, so he comes home and takes a long nap. Today while he napped, I went outside. What glorious weather!! It's the kind of day you wait for all year long. Perfect temperature. Low humidity. Light, delectable breezes. Leaves rustling and thinking about falling.

 A few colorful leaves already crunch under foot.
Behind the garage (which you see on the left) is the orchard. I use that term loosely. The grapevine is quite healthy and has taken OVER, and many of the apple trees have been smothered. Still, it's better than no orchard at all, right?
In the photo below, the orchard is the overgrown vegetation behind the fence. If you look between the tall trees in the background, you'll see the top of the biggest apple tree, shooting branches straight up. It's toward the back of the orchard.

 This gate to the orchard is directly behind the garage.

This is what faces you when you enter the gate. A bit daunting, but one must begin somewhere.

To the left of the gate two apple trees are espaliered along the fence.

 Here's a little fruit tree struggling to survive in the middle of the thicket of pine saplings and vines. I also found a rose bush, a climbing one, I think.

I put on long pants, a long sleeved shirt, and took my loppers and began cutting down sapling trees.

 I took along a dog too. She was pretty happy. Beau stayed inside to nap with his daddy.

Soon Adam and Beau emerged from the house and we all thrashed around in the orchard. Adam saw the path I'd hacked and charged into the fray with little Beau right behind him. Beau became trapped in lots of low-lying vines and couldn't escape. Adam rescued him.
At the back right corner of the orchard is another gate, near the barn.

And we found more passion fruit! Mr. M. must've liked this fruit. It's along the fence that runs from the back orchard gate to the barn. You see below the fruit (which is rounder this time) and one of the flowers.

It's so strange to have these things already growing here, thanks to Mr. M., without our doing a thing. About seven green passion fruit are hanging there today. How many days until they're ripe? I don't know, but we'll be checking.