fall

Wet October

We’ve had a very wet October.

So wet, in fact, that our street flooded on a rainy Friday evening. We got back from a family gathering and there was a city worker out in the street, knee-deep in water, clearing out the storm drain. 

“It’s like this all over town,” he told me.

When the leaves fall, they clog those drains, and with all the rain we’ve had, it was a recipe for a river.

After one rainstorm, everything was glistening and damp in the yard, so I headed outside with the trusty Nifty 50mm to grab a few photos. 

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Autumn Textures

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I’m tired. We’re all tired.

I’m searching for some serenity in all this chaos. Luckily, we have had a pleasant autumn so far, and we take evening walks to shake off the dread and anxiety.

Now daylight savings has changed the light, and we wake up in the sunshine. It’s good, and much-needed, because the sun won’t be around much from now until spring. I’m trying to capture it as much as possible before the darkness comes. 

School has shut down in-person learning until after Thanksgiving. COVID-19 is spreading as usual. The election is over and yet not over. 

So very tired. 

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Autumn Out Back

My co-workers thought I was crazy.

“I’m heading to the woods,” I said after lunch. “If I’m not back in a while, it’s been nice working with you all.”

The woods, they asked? Why?

Because. It’s right out back. At work, our headquarters sits in the middle of a beautiful, hilly forest, with little ponds and lakes all around us. I’ve been dying to get into those woods and explore – dying to get out and shoot, period.

No, the weather wasn’t nice, and no, the light wasn’t perfect. But if felt good to get out and tromp through the fallen leaves on a cool autumn day.

Then my Canon battery died, so I had to rely on my iPhone. Not that that matters.

I made it back by lunch hour’s end, a little wet and a lot refreshed.

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Textures of the Season

Out here, where the roads are named after the family farms, we slide into the quiet season.

It’s all warm colors here at Adams Farm: yellows and reds and oranges. A few greens, but mostly the rustic hue of autumn.

The textures are everywhere, from smooth pumpkins and apples to mottled squashes of every different shape and size.

We’re crazy about the foods of autumn. I could live on apples and squash, while the kids transform into sticky hornet magnets with cider and donuts. We wipe our hands of cinnamon and sugar, we feel for the rigid pumpkin stems, and we toss the bumpy buttercup from crate to wagon.

This is what we live for – the texture of the season.

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Hobbit Place

This is usually our springtime ritual, heading to the Hobbit Place, grabbing flowers and thinking about landscape decorations.

For this year, we went full autumn: mums, pumpkins, decorative gourds – the whole thing. As a Tolkien fan, I love the greenhouse’s name. As a person who cares about their yard, I appreciate their selection.

Tick tock goes the beat of the year. On and on we slide into fall.

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Down On the Farm

I’m a gala man, but really any apple will do.

This year, it’s easy to get positively drunk on them. And with some cider varieties, that’s entirely possible.

I’ve always been an apple guy. As a kid, my mom would get bags of red delicious, and I would have half the bag gone in the first day. As I developed an actual taste, golden delicious and gala, jonathan, and fuji were all favorites. Just this year I discovered the pinova variety – what a beautiful apple!

Here in Michigan, it’s apple season, so we packed up the family and headed out to the countryside – our old stomping grounds – for the annual pumpkin and orchard trip. It’s easy to stick to the regular old apple varieties, so this year I looked for some new kinds. Apples, and squash. There are a million squash varieties.

And like apples, I’ll try them all.

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