Some like 'em tart

2003-10-25 - 11:50 p.m.

I feel really yucky today. The ice pick is back and, well, you don't want to hear the rest. Bleah.

But I haven't felt bad all day. It started out pretty well. I went with my parents today to Apple Hill. We go there at least once a year in the fall during apple harvesting time. I think maybe I'll go with a picture theme again today since I'm not in much of a writing mood.

Apple Hill is actually a bunch of family farms and orchards. Each one sells fruit (lots more than just apples) and pastries and lets people set up craft booths and such things. The second place we stopped had all of these things but they had the biggest selection of varieties of apples. They actually had a little booth set up where you could sample all their varieties and they had a girl there to answer any questions. I discovered that my favorite of the twelve varieties they had available is one called winesap. At any rate, here's a picture of a few of the apples for sale at that particular ranch:

This same ranch also had a pumpkin patch set up in a clearing between their orchards. We walked through it, but didn't buy anything:

In among the pumpkins I found a tomatillo plant that had fruit and still even had some flowers on it. I watched a small honeybee buzz up to the plant and decided that when it landed I would take its picture. What I hadn't realized yet was that all the flowers were facing down towards the ground and they were only maybe six inches from the ground. When the bee landed on the flower, I couldn't see him from my vantage point. So I stuck my camera under there and shot straight up. I like the bright colors of the resulting photo. Did I mention it was in the upper 80's today?

At the very last ranch we stopped, they had a small garden tucked away at the edge of one of their orchards. It was mostly fizzled out for the season, but it had corn that was twenty feet high, easy, plus some tomatoes and peppers. Most of the peppers were a bit shriveled up, but this little guy, barely an inch long, still looked shiny and happy, so I took his picture. I tried to get some tomatoes and other peppers in the background, too.