Our First Apple Harvest...

 We thought maybe they might not make it, the three fruit trees we planted in the front yard. In fact, our first tree--an apricot tree--didn't make it. It died after we planted it (or, it may have been dead when we bought it...). 

We were not to be denied having fruit trees in our yard, so we went out and picked up three trees, an apricot, a nectarine, and an apple tree. The apple tree was the only one that bore fruit.

The other day was harvested the crop.

We ended up with five apples of various size.

But, it's not necessarily about the size of the harvest, but what those little apples represent. It took some trial and error for us to get those trees to survive at least one season. We had to do our research to find out how to plant them--it's not just dig a hole and put in the tree.

Next year we're hoping to get yields from all three trees. They all look healthy enough. But, even the heartiest tree may not make it...some don't.

Yes, our harvest was underwhelming, but I'm happy for it. Here's to more success next year.

The Year That's Been...

 We snapped this picture a year ago today...

What a year it's been.

A lot of things happened in 2020--both to our family and the world--and probably the most amazing was when I pulled up my Ancestry.com account and saw a close DNA match...not just close, sibling-close. Turns out, I found my half-sister. We began corresponding and on the last day of July, 2020, she and her good friend came to visit.

I always knew I had a sister that I'd never met. The little paperwork about my adoption included information that my birth mother had a daughter five years older than me. When I first saw the DNA results, I thought that's who I had found. Turns out, my new-found sister is a few years younger than me. 

It was sort of surreal meeting Kim for the first time. My family noticed subtle things she did that reminded them of me, of things my kids would do. That was sort of surreal, too. We knew we were moving and we were prepping the house to be sold. When I found my sister lived relatively close--one state over--I hoped we'd be able to visit her in the coming year, but that didn't happen. Too bad. Still, we hope to make that long drive one day soon.

In the past twelve months, I've learned more about my sister. She's a kind, caring, warm person who wants the world to be a better place and works heard to make that goal a reality. 

When I was born, the only way for us to find each other would be for our birth mother (which we share...) to have allowed those closed records to be opened. Now, technology allows us to go around that and find the truth. It would, however, be nice to know who our mother is...we still haven't found out that yet. Maybe one day.

One year, twelve months, three-hundred and sixty-five days...

The year that's been.