Upfall

Spring's got flowers, birds, and rebirth, and summer's got long, lazy, nostalgic days, but there's nothing like the snap and tang of a beautiful autumn day as crisp as a firm apple.

A friend once expressed astonishment that I actually liked fall. "All that death and decay!" she exclaimed in horror. But it just doesn't strike me that way. Maybe because getting into flannel pj's and settling in with a good book and a glass of wine on a chilly evening is so lovely, and the way the overwintering insects, other animals, and plants prepare to go to sleep for the winter seems so akin to that settling-in to me. Not like death at all.

And the excited chatter of the birds pausing to refuel in our trees sounds more like pre-vacation hubbub than the start of a forced march south.

As ever, this fall saw us trekking out to a pumpkin patch, where we took pictures that we've taken a zillion times before and will no doubt snap again in future.


It's a very, very sincere pumpkin patch.

 

Never noticed how much corn buttress roots look like dinosaur feet...



...nor how much a corn tassel looks like a hydra.



This year the pumpkin farm added an adorable horsy tractor-train--quite amusing to see it chugging across the field from far away; you could only see the horses' heads over the corn stalks.



Rose hips in hedgerow.



Another sure sign of autumn: the pumpkin cannon, which can hurl
a pumpkin across two fields and into a swamp.



Picture 2,412,693 of our paper birch in fall splendor against blue sky.



I know we're very safety-conscious in the USA,
but are falling leaves really that heavy?

Autumn also means maple pumpkin cupcakes from Cupcake Royale.
Nothing sad or decaying about that!