This past Sunday, Gene and I arose, prepared to spend the majority of the day picking olives. The day before, Saturday, we picked all day and I have to admit it was a bit too cold for my liking. The fingers get soooo cold, making the olive branches (and leaves) even more treacherous. But Gene is getting more familiar with his hand-held harvester, and all of the fruit is getting picked-primarily by us (or by him I should say!).

Sunday morning felt even colder than the day before. Gene heads outside at about 8:00 to get started. About 10 minutes later, he’s back in the house, looking for tools. Battery problems with the machine. This is not a good start. Secretly, I think, “oh, darn-nit, no picking”. Gene figures out that the problem was actually in the wire itself-it was shorting out. “No time messing with that right now” and off to the mill he went with a half of a bin of lovely olives. You can imagine there was a great sense of relief watching my honey and my olives drive away. Ah, but there are plenty of other ways to spend our day-like planting (finally) our remaining 20 baby olive trees.

On December 16th, exactly six weeks after the baby Picuals were put in the ground, 20 Arbequinas were planted. Once again, Mother Nature gifted us with rain for the new trees-how nice! What we can’t figure out is, where the heck did the last six weeks GO? If anyone knows, please clue me in…