WOWZER A ZILLION PEARS!!

I really hope you can see this well -- it's as far zoomed in as I can make my camera go. This is a little puff of leaves on our pear tree less than 12 inches square and it is just COVERED in itty bitty pears. In fact the more I stood there looking the more pears that seemed to just appear before my eyes. Even a few branches of new growth have pears on them! This year I think we'll have enough pears I may have to get a booth at the farmer's market to sell some! The year we moved in (Oct. 2006) all the pears were slippery goo on the ground. In 2007 I picked what I could but we were in Everett during the appropriate harvest time for Kyle's work. In 2008 I got some but lost some while we were in San Diego for Kyle's work AGAIN! So this year I am determined he will not work off station so we will be here to pick every last pear and hopefully get them all canned. They are a little later in the season than my mommy group usually cans so hopefully we won't be too burned out to make lots of yummy pear butter and pear halves and pear ... whatever else I can find a recipe for.
Now we just need to get our garden prepped and get our veggies in the ground. We should have quite a bit of homegrown organic produce this year! Last year I had no bug problems so I am hoping we repeat that so I don't have to find any non-chemical bug repellents. Mostly I just need to keep the neighborhood alley cats away. And slugs/snails--my gigantic zucchini leaves did attract some snails towards the end of the season and that really grossed me out so I just stopped picking them after that.