Happy Autumn!

 If I had to choose, I'd have to say my favorite thing about the Autumn is the smell in the air. It's crisp yet wet and fresh with a hint of decaying leaves as they turn their brilliant shades of red, orange, yellow and brown. A smell that reminds me of the apple orchard I used to visit when I was little. The sky may darken but the lanes I travel glow with warm colors that brighten the world if only for a short time and with them come the spirits of the past that draw me into yearning for old traditions long since broken by time and age.
One is never too old to visit an orchard, no, but with age comes responsibility and with responsibility comes less time to do... well really much of anything. Yet when I was younger we always found time to head upstate, where we would hit up an orchard until I was red in the face from running about looking for the best of the apples and my parents would always joke "look at your cheeks, so read someone might mistake you for an apple!" We would then gather our apples, take the hay ride back to the car and head to a dinner/restaurant called Grandma's where we were greeted by animatronic displays and cases full of sugar coated cookies and pies aplenty. How I miss those days, yearning each year to go apple picking just once more like I used to, rather than just visiting the local market to get my apples, shined, waxed & touched by countless hands.
Well, this year, though we couldn't head upstate, we finally found our way to an orchard. It was small & a little crowded & lacked the hay ride & abundance of trees & apples,(less apples due to an early season) but heck, it was still an orchard & where they lacked apples they had peaches and plums to fill their void (well not exactly all that many plums).

(There were very strict rules about picking apples in the restricted zones, if caught your apples were confiscated and if caught again you were expelled without a refund. Though the sign said the apples in that zone were not ripe... they looked to be the ripest, reddest, JUICIEST apples I have seen in a long while. A lot of people, sad to say, went home empty handed that day.
There were also signs warning about bees:
"Warning: There are bees in the orchard this year. If you have an allergy we recommend that you DO NOT ENTER to go picking. If you choose to go picking you do so at your own risk."
With that warning in mind I entered & found no bees... until I stepped on a swarm of them. My voice went up three octaves that moment and I ran like the wind, only to find more at the plum trees as I grabbed a plum and gently turned it around- TADA bee! -I'm not a big fan of bees- So... when an orchard warns you about bees... THEY ARE SERIOUS!)

PEACHES!

Some kind of berry! (Not meant for picking or eating, I don't think)

I spent a short while in the orchard wandering then chasing after the butterflies, thinking they might lead me somewhere with the best fruit since they tend to have good taste in sweet things. Of course they all ended up going toward the forbidden zone or toward the pasture beyond the orchard.

 

Hmmm, now looking through my pictures it would appear I didn't really take any pictures of the apples... or the plums for that matter. Oh well.

Needless to say we managed to fill up a bag or two worth of apples and one for peaches and half of the plums. Then on our way home we stopped at a farmers market which was a ways down the road.

Gourd Pumpkin things!

I like how the ones to the left are named "Spooky gourds" though they're not all that spooky.

I wanted to take a picture of the Brussel sprout plants because they were really weird looking (in my opinion... I've never actually seen a brussel sprout plant before so I was getting really odd looks when I exclaimed my fascination of them... they looked like big hands holding little pods...)

Corn Stalks with ears!

If ever you stop at a farm stand and they are selling fresh cooked/roasted/grilled sweet corn, I recommend you buy an ear... I did and it was the tastiest corn I have ever eaten.

(droplet of water on some kind of lettus-y plant)

I have never seen a cricket like this in person before. It kind of reminds me of the cricket from the story: "The Cricket in Times Square" By George Selden

And of course no trip to an orchard (or the market) is complete until you make (or purchase) a fresh apple pie. My favorite part my Autumn tradition. The only one I refuse to let go of.

And for the heck of it:

Guess what was chillin' in front of my house when I got home yesterday.

:)