forbidden fruit

my biggest little one is out til tomorrow earning herself some extra pocket money by helping out a mother of two who has started her chemotherapy today. Biggest does this every Friday now and has discovered that little boys are fun and that hoovering is only half as bad as she thought - especially if you get paid to like it ;-)
As she's not around, we can harvest the first pumpkin and eat it for dinner. She hates pumpkin and has already been looking at my bumper harvest in a kind of panic stricken way.
Half of this beauty is baking in the oven with some other yummy things from the garden and lashings of cheese. The other half has been steamed and will be filled into tubs and frozen so that I can chuck into soups in the winter.
In other news from Spitziland (as you like it so much) the pigs have sleep in a mud pool all day. It's very hot again. I've steam-extracted (new toy!) a load of apple/plum/elderberry juice to make into jelly tonight. Littlest went to a birthday party - but not just any, her friends are triplets and that means the birthday party of three little girls with threeX little girlfriends. It was very pink and screechy and they all had a wonderful time. I was in our German office this morning...and...er...that's it, I think. Mr. Spitzi is still writing. I have to edit for him this weekend and then he'll have about 2 weeks "break" (someone mentioned an apple harvest?) and then all hell breaks out and we won't see much of him for a year....we're a bit worried about that :-/ But I'm sure that, somewhere in my superhumaness I can pull off working, having three kids and a small-holding. Right? And I won't even mention the lack of money and the fact that he's sad about not seeing enough of the children because that just freaks us out....*takes deep breath*

Good things: I am the right side of a glass of wine (or two) and it's Friday....