Autumn pickings......

We have been enjoying some beautiful clear autumn days for weeks now and this last weekend was no exception. On Sunday I took the girls out to the orchard which is a 10 to 15 minute drive north of  Whangamata to pick some autumn fruits. Even though they had a little moan about it they had a lot of fun climbing the ladder provided and picking the biggest and then the smallest apples they could find.

The trees were laden and the fallen apples left a lovely autumn coloured carpet underneath.

We picked braeburns for eating and......

......grannysmiths for cooking although these are Amelia's favourite eating apples.

An abandoned birds nest from last spring.

After picking 2 big bag fulls of apples we headed on over to the Feijoa trees. These are our favourite autumn fruits and our orchard has some really big juicy ones. When we tire from eating them I make Feijoa muffins and Feijoa cake.

We also filled the biscuit tins. The girls baked something each and even managed to bake in the kitchen at the same time without fighting. Amelia helped Caitlin out when she needed it but didn't interfere when she was wanting to be independent and do things herself. I was very impressed with their maturity and managed to put a dent in my ironing pile while they were busy. Caitlin made Anzac biscuits  (this is a great, easy recipe perfect for beginner cooks!) because Sunday was also Anzac day and Amelia made a lemon and almond slice. I made the double chocolate biscuits in the foreground of the above photo.