This Sunday brings us the Harvest Moon and next weekend is the local harvest festival (which I'm gonna check out with my mom). Autumn is my very favorite time of year. The extra bit of chill in the night air, the golden light in the late afternoon, the pumpkins and apples (and in our area, cheap, tasty tomatoes!).
Today after work I made my first (likely of many!) trip of the season out to my favorite local apple orchard, Gopher Glen. The drive to the orchard is my favorite part. It is about 2.5 miles of twisty country road through the woods in See Canyon past a couple other orchards. For me it is just as potent a soul soother as going to yoga. Despite the threat of fire, I would *love* to live in the peace and quiet of the woods. I'm such a hobbit in that respect.
My favorite apples from Gopher Glen are their Golden Delicious. If you go to their website and read the description it says "These are not grocery store Goldens" and they're not kidding. They're crisp and sweet (but not too sweet!) and store very well. I also picked up a pound of Galas, which are at the end of their season, and a pound of Jonagold (or was it Jonalicious? Hmmm.). The grower at the orchard was the person who identified the apple tree in our backyard as Red Gravenstein. We took an apple out to them and after it stumped the stand workers they passed the rest of the apple and our phone number on to the grower.
As for my own little harvest, we're still picking zucchini and tomatoes but all the pumpkins and green beans have been picked and the vines have died out and been added to the green waste bin. I ended up with 9 pumpkins from the 4 plants, all harvested in August and currently curing in my sunroom. Next season I'm gonna wait a little longer to plant and plant more than one variety (probably a pie variety, an heirloom like Cinderella, and a jack-o-lantern variety).
Soon I'm going to plant sweet peas and my Meyer lemon tree and fill in the area that I've planned for permanent plants with things like lavender, rosemary, sage and geraniums. I've got some nasturtium seeds that have been put off all summer that I'll likely put in a half barrel. As for veggies, I'm hoping to grow some rainbow chard but that's about all for the cool season food crops.
