Apples, Jelly, Tombs, and the end of Autumn

Autumn.
Don't you just love that word? Instead of Fall I prefer the term Autumn. The word sounds beautiful and ugly at the same time. That's pretty much how I would also describe the season. The change in the tree leaves are beautiful at first, but then they fall to the ground and turn brown. Yuck! The weather starts as a nice breezy 65 degrees and then it gets cold, rainy, and grey. Yuck!

So this Autumn I thought I'd try something new. A few new things actually.

First, I went to an apple farm. Now before you assume the wrong farm (big, commercialized Patterson's Apple Farm) let me enlighten you. Cara and I specifically searched for an apple farm in the area that was not Patterson so that we could avoid the masses of people. Everyone goes to Patterson's. Great. What else is there? Well after some online searching and suggestions from a coworker we discovered Eddy's Apple Farm. Perfect! Ironically, it's right down the street from Patterson's. This farm was great. For just a few extra minutes of walking you could bypass the area where most people were apple picking and enter a field full of trees overflowing with a variety of gorgeous, plump apples. There were so many apples and varieties that Cara and I didn't know where to begin. In the end we picked about an average of two apples per variety. Cortland, Melrose, Jonathon, Jonagold, Wine, Golden delicious, Fuji, and the list goes on. I had a ton of fun. This was the first time I'd ever picked an apple straight off an apple tree. They looked so plump and healthy. How can I ever go back to just getting apples from a grocery store. Apples are much more attractive when you pull them straight off of the tree. We plan to make applesauce and apple cobbler with the apples we picked.

Second, while at Eddy's Apple Farm we discovered another treat. Concord grapes! Wow, I've definitely never picked grapes before. So off we went to the grape vines. They were beautiful. Golden leaves with dark bluish/purple grape clusters hanging from the vines. We picked a lot determined to make them into grape jelly. Once home we acquired all the necessary ingredients and utensils for making jelly (basically pectin, cheesecloth, and jars). Then we set about extracting the juice from the grapes. A process which left my hands slightly purple when I tried to squeeze as much juice as possible through the cheesecloth. Next time I'll wear gloves. Then we added the pectin and tons of sugar to the cooked and boiling juice. I found a great recipe that explained step by step with pictures how to make and jar the jelly. It also gave great tips for making the jelly thick enough and easily processing the jars. Cara and I had a great time jelly making and ended up with 4 1/2 jars of jelly. Yum!


Finally, on a mildly warm day last week, I went on a picnic to the metroparks with my sister and two new friends from church, Aubree and Ben. Lunch was fun as we sat at a picnic table eating ham & turkey sandwiches and discussing a variety of grown up, intellectual things like Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings. I'm sure if we'd talked long enough we would have made it to the latest X-men cartoon Cara and I had recently watched online. Ah, I love hanging out with friends. Afterwards we drove to Lakeview Cemetery to view the variety of wealthy grave stones. Cara wasn't too excited about this, but hey, it's the perfect thing to do around Halloween right? We discovered that president Garfield was buried in the cemetery so we went to see his crypt/monument. It was pretty extensive inside complete with stained glass images of different people who represented something I didn't understand and a huge marble statue of president Garfield. We were told that his body was downstairs so down we went. Whoa! Who knew that the coffin was just there on display. I thought it'd be locked in a room where all you see is the door. But no, there were bars so you couldn't touch the coffin but there it was, including the coffin of his wife and the ashes of his daughter and her husband. Weird. What is our obsession with preserving and glorifying a dead body? Getting out of the crypt we went to the roof of the monument and saw an amazing view of the city with a sea of multicolored trees in front of it. It was so peaceful because you couldn't see the cars and people moving below the trees. Wow, what a view!

And now that the beautiful part of Autumn is ending I'm glad I made the most of it. On to November.