Autumn

And so my sister and I returned from our adventures in Atlantic City on Monday evening, only to find autumn starting to get into full swing in Pennsylvania. In past years, we've had warm late Septembers and my husband and I have been able to go swimming well into mid to late October. This current fall has the feel of a more traditional autumn to it, though, with cool overnight temps setting in in late September. For a few weeks already, I have been seeing a hint of the coming foliage change in the trees.

I got home late on Monday night and quickly unpacked and downloaded over a thousand photos from my beach vacation. As I post this blip, it's Friday morning and I have had such a busy week that - with the exception of choosing two of them for blip - I have not even sorted the beach photos yet! I'm hoping to do that this weekend. Something to look forward to.

I awoke on Tuesday morning to a crisp, perfect, blue-sky autumn day in central Pennsylvania. Since I had anticipated a late night on Monday, I arranged my schedule to work at home on Tuesday morning. Did I get to sleep in? Well . . . do any of you have cats? And if you do, you know there is no such thing as sleeping in, when you have cats! The feline alarm clock goes off the same time each day, regardless of what time you got to bed the night before.

And so I got up on Tuesday morning and checked my work e-mail and played a bit of catch-up on the computer, while my husband packed up his backpack for an overnight trip to the Quehanna Wild Area. He'd stayed home on cat duty while I was away at the beach, and he was ready to roll. The Pennsylvania woods were calling him!

By just before lunchtime, we were both ready to head out: him to the wild woods (replete with the sound of bugling elk), and me to the office. But on my drive in, I noticed quite a commotion at Way Fruit Farm, near where we live. The farm has been owned by the same family since the 1800s; according to local records, the Way family was among the first local settlers in the area.

On this day, there were many cars in the parking lot, and pumpkins of all sizes and shapes, and every color of chrysanthemums (even pink ones to match the shoes I had on!), and apples apples apples - EVERY kind of apple you can imagine! - and wagons getting ready to take the children on a ride around the orchard to see the process of apple growing, from seed to harvest.

I stopped for just 15 minutes or so, and wandered around the grounds and through the fruit farm's store, which has grown considerably even since I bought my house nearby in 2004. In fact, the first time I saw my house, I visited Way Fruit Farm. I had stopped in town and bought myself a cheesesteak before driving out, and I parked my car in the fruit farm parking lot and ate every bite of that tasty cheesesteak, either before or after cruising past what would eventually become MY house. Except that at the time, I was told that the house was already sold, which broke my heart, but then it came back on the market and I snapped it up, just like that! (You can read the longer version of that story here, if you're interested.)

Which I share with you only to say . . . Way Fruit Farm and I go way back. And maybe you have places like this where you live too, places you drive past pretty much every day . . . but never really get around to stopping. So on this day, I stopped and visited. The pumpkins, the chrysanthemums, the apples: all signs of autumn getting into full swing!

As soon as I picked this photo for this day's blip, I decided that the song to accompany it would HAVE to be something by the Smashing Pumpkins. And so here they are, with an acoustic version of Today. This line in the lyrics resonates with me in particular: "Today is the greatest day I've ever known . . . " For what do we ever really have but today? So seize it! Yes, seize the day!

P.S. I've fallen a bit behind on blip, so I am posting several blips in one day to catch up. Please be sure to check out the Wednesday and Thursday photos as well!