The pumpkin post

Alas, the long awaited pumpkin post. The two pumpkins above are the fruits of our labor; our very own home-grown beauties. We'll come back to them. First, let's go back in time to the end of September. Our local farmers' market had a fall festival. The kids in our community all had fun painting and decorating pumpkins. Silas decided to go for a textured look and applied massive glops of paint. It's been almost a month and the thing is still not dry. And our porch, home to our little pumpkin masterpiece, has a multi-colored ring of craft paint on it.
Jump forward a few weeks: Silas and I decided it was time to harvest our pumpkins.
Proud of his pumpkin:
Firefighter Pumpkin, ready to put out any Halloween related fires:
And taking their rightful place next to the painted pumpkin:
We hope to carve them this weekend...
But that's not all! One more pumpkin joined our trio. Silas had his first school field trip...to the pumpkin patch. I went along, and I've gotta tell you, at first I thought it was going to be a disaster. He didn't like the 120 year old barn we stared off in (that's it in the background of the next picture). None of the other kids seemed to notice how spooky it was, but Silas sure did. He refused to jump in the hay with the other children, and I truly thought the field trip was going to be a bust.

But, I finally got him to detach from me long enough for him to run through the hay bale maze.
By the time the group went through the flower trails and the corn maze, he walked along with the other kids and more or less forgot about his parents' existence (for a good 5 minutes anyways).
He picked out a pumpkin,
And the school trip ended with the quintessential class shot. Awe.
That's about it, for now. I hope there are lots of pumpkins in your life too.

Leaf walk

A few weeks ago, Silas' class went on a leaf walk, then put all the leaves up in the windows. The idea must have struck him as a good one because this evening, he asked us to go on a leaf walk with him. The above picture shows the results of that walk. We have a pretty long fall here; plenty of time to add to our leaf collection.

I'm still working on putting together a pumpkin post. It will happen. Soon.

If it's autumn and you love it...

This is my favorite time of year: harvest festivals, crisp cool days, falling leaves, pumpkins, Halloween. We are enjoying all of the above here at Planet Silas. Silas got to ride a pony at the Johnson Farm Harvest festival. He rode the land slide, too, just like last year:
Yesterday, we went to the Fire Station's pancake breakfast, skipped the pancakes, and headed straight for the line to ride on the fire trucks. Unlike last year, Silas changed his mind about 10 minutes in and decided there was no way he was going to ride that truck. He still got a chance to show off his firefighter jacket, however.
On one of our last truly warm days, we had a picnic supper with friends along the Hood Canal.
It was lovely:
I'm planning an Autumn-themed week here on the blog. We've got pumpkins, pumpkins and more pumkins as well as a sneak peak at Silas' Halloween costume. Stay tuned!

Harvest Festival 09

Silas and I had a blast today at the Harvest Festival. We saw lots of friends and got to ride in a cart pulled by horses. Silas drove an old tractor...
And rode down the Land Slide (twice!). There he is, making his way down. I can't believe I captured this on film--they fly down so fast:
We listened to a lot of great music too. Next to the stage, they have an old carnival trailer from the 1920s. Isn't it beautiful?
The Harvest Festival is put on each year at Johnson Farm, which is a public farm run by the Trust for Working Landscapes. All the donations from this event go to this worthy organization, which promotes and supports local farms and farmers.

This is the third year that Silas has gone to this Festival. Here's last year's posting.

On the trail, and the bounty of October

The picture above shows the trail that's right across the street from our house. We walk on it often, and will be enjoying the big leaf maples as they begin to change color. Silas is always looking for mushrooms, which are becoming numerous as fall progresses.

Amazingly, we still have some strawberries growing in our patch. Silas always likes to stop to look for ripe ones, which are increasingly hard to find. With shorter, cooler days, the berries take much longer to ripen, and often get eaten by insects in the interim. We still manage to find a few! There are quite a number of huckleberries to be found near us as well, and our hard fruits like Asian pears and quinces, did quite nicely for us this year. So, even though we are getting on towards the end of October we are still managing to eat a few things from the garden.

Pumpkin Picking Pics

Hi! It's me, Silas. Guess what, guess what, guess what? I'm really excited because we went to the pumpkin farm this weekend!

The pumpkin farm is only about 5 minutes from our house. When we first got there, I was amazed. Look at all of the pumpkins!

My mom calls this one "Three pumpkins."

My parents said I could choose a pumpkin, but it's hard to decide. I wanted all of them.

As you can imagine, riding in the cart was one of the highlights. You haven't lived until you've experienced this, trust me!
In the end, we picked out 4 different kinds, plus a couple of little baby ones.

Back at home, we put one out on the front stoop and the rest on our deck.
Mom continued to take pictures.
Just a few more, right?
Well, it's my own fault, really. If I wasn't so cute, she wouldn't take so many pics.
That's the recap of my first trip to the pumpkin farm. Happy fall everyone!

Harvest fair and akebia fruit

Last weekend was sunny and warm--perfect weather for Bainbridge Island's annual Harvest Fair. There were goats, bunnies, and other farm animals, music, food, hay rides, and other fallsy activities. Si's favorite thing was to sit on this old tractor and pretend to drive. In fact, he really didn't understand why he had to get off of it so that other children could have a turn. "Sharing" has not quite entered his vocabulary yet.

The akebia vine growning on our garage was also displaying it's wierd fruit last weekend. I couldn't help but include a few pictures, since they are so beautifully odd when they open to reviel all of the tiny seeds tucked into the long cylindrical casing.

One expects perhaps an alien creature to emerge instead of such a benign plant...
Silas was very interested in them as well. Apparently the akebia fruit, which is native to Japan and Korea, is edible, though we've never partaken before.