Every year we get together with 3 other families for our annual apple picking adventure.  It seems like we just did that but poof it’s time again!  Mother Nature has a habit of rain or the threat of rain whenever we plan on coming and of course it was forecast to rain.  But we planned going anyways.  We won’t melt!

It turned out to be quite the weekend.  About a week or so ago this little kitten, we’ve called her Tiramisu, decided our back garden was the place to be.

Isn’t she cute?  Well we think it’s a she.  But she would show up during the evenings so we waited because you don’t want to take anyone’s kitty.  But we came back from our date night on Saturday night at 9.30 and there she was in our garden.  Way too late to be out.  So we grabbed her and brought her in and set her up in the guest room (aren’t we good hosts? 🙂 ).  Boy the dogs were curious!  The Humane Society opened at 11am in the morning so we planned on bringing her over.  We have two dogs and a cat.  Our cat would just mutiny if we brought another animal to stay.  Bad enough when I opened the bathroom door in the morning and she all but had her paws on her hips and a look on her face “We need to have a chat”.  She was not amused!  If I had my way I’d adopt every pet that needed a home but I do need to think of the rest of the family and the animals we already have.  So we couldn’t keep her.  But at least she was safe because that night the rain that was supposed to come Sunday afternoon swept through Saturday night.  I was up all night listening to that storm.  Sometimes it was like a very large fire hose was aimed at our house!

Come Sunday though it was gorgeous.  Such a beautiful day for apple picking.  The kids love it.  They all run round eating the apples.  The orchard know some of the goods go out in stomachs rather than bags.  Think that is reflected in the price!  Fair enough.  I joked with my daughter saying we should have weighed her going in and then out again.  🙂

Try as we might to be careful it never fails that you pick one apple and a bunch fall off.  By the state of things I was not the only one with this problem.

At this orchard they had the oldest and I think tallest elm tree in the region and I was all set to take some really nice photos to share.  What I found instead was this:

It died.  Such a shame.  It was like a beacon for apple picking.

This year they had a very large pumpkin patch and we came across this funny looking thing.  Someone thought it was a turban pumpkin.

I love the colours of autumn.

The trees were laden with apples of all sorts of varieties.  We filled our 1/2 bushel bag in no time.

Which means baking!  We made baked apples last night for dessert.  But there is apple pie, apple cake, and a bunch of other goodies to make.  🙂  Of course a lot of them will make their way into the kids lunches.  An apple a day….