First Day of Fall

That title is deceptive. Where I am it is still in the mid 90's. No rain. My yard is crunchy. I don't dare plant "fall" plants in my pots for fear they won't make it to Halloween. (wait, they probably wouldn't make it to Halloween regardless of the weather, but I'm wandering...)

I got it in my head last year that we were going to go on a family outing to the mountains to pick apples.  I had visions of me being so "Martha Stewart" and making homemade apple pies and homemade apple butter.  I had such plans.  Sounds good--  Sounds like fall.

I had grand ideas- we'd  take a tractor ride through the orchard, pick some apples, enjoy the outdoors. Get back to nature.  A living Hallmark card, if you will.

No one said it would be  110 degrees with 100% humidity on that day last year at the end of September.  That made it super fun!

We had just gotten on the tractor.  Fresh from our air conditioned car, the heat hadn't had a chance to really hit us yet. Look. They're still happy.

The tractor dumps you off at the pig races.  I don't think they took bets, but the way people were yelling and carrying on you'd think they'd bet their last dollar on Little Miss Hamhock.  Yes, the piggies were painted different colors. I don't know if they liked it, but they sure didn't seem to mind.
And by the way, someone passed out from the heat. That added to the excitement! (they were ok...I'm not sadistic!)

Finally, after the tractor ride, pig races and various other kitchy things to do/look at, we're actually at the trees picking apples. That expression on The Oldest is "Mom, hurry up and take the darned picture because I'm hot and sweaty and there are bugs everywhere."

I don't think she picked one apple.

Here's The Middle. She's hot, sweaty but man, she was into the picking. Her dad and I were seriously thinking of pimping her out to the orchard to earn some extra cash.

When it was all said and done, I think we'd picked two small bags worth of apples.

We sweated about 5 lbs of water weight that day as well.

And I ended up not making one thing with those apples. Martha evidently stayed up in the mountains and didn't make the trek back to my kitchen.

The end of our day. Sweaty, tired.  But nothing a good Hello Kitty cd player and some Veggie Tales couldn't fix.

Oh yeah. We are so doing this again.