Picking apples

I have two trees: a Wolf River and a Gravenstein. I picked the Gravensteins over a month ago, but the Wolfe Rivers like to stay on the tree longer. I will pick a bunch today. They are lovely and wonderful pie apples. Picking is not quite overdue!

Meanwhile, my magnolia has damage this morning.

Human? No, I don’t think so.

That spike or the 3 prong in the neighborhood, sharpening their antlers. I have watched them other places in town. It feels safer from a car. I think I need some protection for the magnolia.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: overdue.

caged rose

WHY is this poor rose caged, you ask? I removed the top bit of cage to take the photograph. This is the only bloom this summer, because the rose keeps growing out of the cage. It’s in my backyard and the deer chomp down to the wires. I think they need vitamin C.

I tested this the other day. I trimmed a rose in the fenced front yard. I took the trimmings and spread them under the apple tree. This is not a great picture but I was happy to see this young visitor eating roses and fallen apples.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Vape

First, the definition of vapor:

noun

  1. The gaseous state of a substance that is liquid or solid at room temperature.
  2. A faintly visible suspension of fine particles of matter in the air, as mist, fumes, or smoke.
  3. A mixture of fine droplets of a substance and air, as the fuel mixture of an internal-combustion engine.

So vaping is smoking. It can be called vaping, but that is to trick us into thinking that it is not smoking, that we are not sucking chemicals into our delicate lung tissue. We only have one set of lungs. Lungs are like a tree, either the roots or the leaf parts upside down. Air is drawn in by our muscles expanding the chest and diaphragm, down the trachea, the bronchi, the bronchioles and at last to the alveoli, where tiny veins wrap each alveoli, trading carbon dioxide for oxygen.

I think of smoking as every cigarrette distroying an alveolus.

Vaping too, vaping is smoking. The nicotine is suspended in a solution and the vaporizer heats up until it is in vapor form. I started reading about vaporizers at least a decade ago. There were over 500 different types, mostly made in China, and there are all sorts of solutions. I was horrified to read that ethylene glycol was one of the solutions that held nicotine. When a dog drinks antifreeze, ethylene glycol, it is poisonous to the brain. Does anyone think that we should inhale smoke with antifreeze and nicotine in it? Really?

There is no control of what is put in the solutions. We don’t know what they will do long term but we know that nicotine is addictive and damages the lungs. Some of the vaporizers get so hot that the metal is also vaporized. Heavy metals are clearly bad for the lungs and poisonous as well.

Here is an article from the U of Colorado Medical Center with further reasons NEVER to start vaping. Because vaping is smoking: don’t let the term fool YOU. 4 reasons why you should stop vaping.

For the RDP: vapor.

Apple crisp by Malene

Malene’s apple crisp

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice apples and place in baking pan.

Mix:
1/2 C. flour
1 C brown sugar
1 C oatmeal
1 stick butter
dash cinnamon

Mix the flour and etc and put the mix on the apples in the pan.
Cook in 350 degree F oven until brown. 30 minutes in my oven.

You can peel the apples or not.
You can add some apple juice.

sliced apples
topping for apple crisp
ready for topping
ready to bake
yummmmmmy