SevenQuick Takes: Autumn Insanity

1. It's true: after a long hot melty summer, I kinda go crazy in the fall!

The weather cools off and I finally feel like leaving my air conditioned house and doing things. Like playgrounds!


Why waste the nice days on school? We do a lot of heavy duty stuff when it's very hot or very cold out, just so that we can take off on beautiful days like these.

 2. Also, I love it when the leaves change.

You can tell because I have taken a picture of all five leaves which have changed color within a mile of my house.

 I think I am still keyed to the leaf changes when I was living farther north.  The leaves here won't really get going for two week yet.

3. We went apple picking on Tuesday!


80 pounds and 6 kinds of apples later...

I have a new favorite apple: Winecrisp.

You probably won't see it in supermarkets (it's quite an ugly apple), but if you find it in a farmer's market, buy all you can!  It's very sweet with a slight balancing tartness and a spicy taste that's hard to describe. It's also intensely apple-y.

4. In the last three days we've eaten caramel apples (that's Klenda making caramel), made apple sauce and apple butter (that's apple butter baking down), made apple butter pumpkin muffins, and eaten a lot of apples.

Still to come: apple fritters, apple tarts, apple bread, and (Klenda promises) many many pies!

5. Then there are the pumpkins and squash.

Carving pumpkins, painted for the interim.

And eating pumpkins: Fairy Tale and Cinderella, both just fabulously tasty.

And eating squashes, the taste test winners from last year: Buttercup, Sweet Dumpling, and Carnival.


6. Moderately unrelated, while at the farm where we picked the apples, Choclo wanted to buy an enormous squash.

This was after I had bought all the other pumpkins and squashes, so I was reluctant... until he offered to pay for it out of his allowance.

So we brought it home, and he immediately set it up in the comfiest chair in the house.  Then he swiped my small butternut squashes and a permanent marker.

Then he explained:

This is King Gourd.

And these are his bodygourds.



7. Meanwhile, I just realized that Oob's picture is going to look like an early Halloween costume.  It isn't.  My kids just dress up all the time and ask me to put their pictures on the blog.

He's a bow man, which confused everyone since we have friends named the Bowmans.

Hope you are enjoying a fabulous fall wherever you are, more fun with Kelly!