Weekend Visit to the Mountains

Me and my Aunt and Kev went up and spent a couple days visiting my parents at their mountain house this weekend. (As opposed to their Florida house, where they've been spending most of their time lately.)

It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend to be in the mountains. Not too hot, nice breeze, low(er) humidity. I slept with my bedroom window open and it was awesome.

Dad's fruit orchard is looking beautiful (no surprise, everything he does turns out fantastic...wish I had inherited that particular gene from him).

He has..I forget exactly how many - at least 10 - varieties of apple trees. Tart varieties to very sweet.

The McIntosh tree went apple crazy. It's so heavy loaded with apples, he had to prop the limbs with 2x4's so they wouldn't break. WoW.

He had two Pear trees that are also producing well.

The grape arbor is looking good. Already had some purple grapes, but mostly still green. I think we're going to learn how to make Wine this year.

Flowers and houseplants grow for Mom like fruit does for Dad (also a gene I wish I had inherited from her).

No joke, Mom was saying how her plethora of Hydrangea had gotten too big, so she just went out and hacked them down to a smaller size.  (If I had done that, the whole plant would have died. Hers is growing new leaves.) She said she took the parts she chopped off and threw them in near the burn pile to burn later, when the state wide burn ban is lifted. Anyway she went back sometime later and they had taken root in the ground there and started growing new plants. Argh.

She can also just pinch a piece off of most any plant, stick it in dirt, and it'll grow like magic. My Grannie, her Mom, had that gift, too. I do not. I try to root cuttings and most of them just die.

At any rate, I had mentioned as how I'd wanted my (other) Aunt (her other sister) to fix me some of her beautiful Christmas cactus, and Mom was like, "Oh, I have a lot of that downstairs. You can take some with you."

So I was sent home with 2 pots full of Christmas cactus from my Mom, and a bushel of apples, and a bucket of pears from my Dad.  I'm a lucky, lucky gurl.

The other plant is "Airplane plant". My Aunt wanted one of them. Mom had about 10 pots of those, started from one piece of plant she'd gotten from one of my late great-Aunts. She tried to give me some, too,but I'm still not a fan of just plain green plants. I like fleurs.

I found a picture of my (other) Aunt's Christmas cactus from last Christmas. Clearly she has "the gift", too.
I hope I can get mine to look that good and bloom out that pretty. (What am I saying? I hope I can just keep the things alive.)