Everyone gets a little sad when the heat waves of summer roll away and take with them popsicles, fresh garden watermelon, shorts and tank tops, and most of all the fresh produce from your backyard. Unless of course you have a year-round garden, or grow pumpkins and squash. In that case, you may still have a couple more weeks. Nick and I were blessed with quite a few watermelon and a couple good pumpkins.
As gardeners, we may be a little sad to see our main season crops wither away and the frost creep in and kill the others, but fall is a great time to go to apple orchards, carve pumpkins, and eat s’mores while telling ghost stories around the campfire.
Fall starts giving us those sentimental feelings that come around during the holidays. And of course, Thanksgiving is in sight and we get to stuff ourselves more than the turkey we are eating.
Well, Nick and I were thinking of where to go for our date in October, and we decided to go to Boggio’s Apple Orchard. We decided then that it would be even more fun if we brought my brother, Nicholas, with us too. We had fun going through all of the activities in the orchard including picking more pumpkins to carve and a giant jumping pillow. There were pony rides for the chikldren, which we could not convince Nicholas to go on, hayrack rides, pedal cars, a giant treehouse slide that Nicholas loved, and a petting zoo with rabbits, goats, sheep that baa’d loudly, llamas, ducks, and a camel! We bought some animal food and each fed of us fed one of the animals. Nick fed the goats with Nicholas, and I fed a llama. The goats would lick your hand like a dog does.
The orchard also had a silo filled with 3 feet of corn kernels you could dig in. We had lots of fun, and even ran into our youth minister David and his wife, Meg, and their two boys, and also Rico and Ashley and their two boys. So after we were all done spending money on festive food like homemade fudge and apple cider donuts, we all went out to dinner at Culver’s. It was a fun time for everyone.
Fall also brings leaves, and lots of them. Nick and I spent some time one Sunday raking up some and making a huge pile. We also constructed a fort using a wood board, a barrel, and the leaves. It was quite warm and comfortable inside. Summer may have all day and night fun, but I think that fall brings serenity to the gardener because after all our hard work, we get rewarded with the fruits of our labor and memories and happiness with family in friends.