The Hunt for Fall Leaves (and Pumpkins)
/I constantly feel like the White Rabbit with my blog. I look at time/date and say to myself, "I'm late, I'm late for a very important post. Not time to say hello good-bye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late." There are at least five things on my list to write about here. Some of them can wait (like all the wonderful books I've read recently), but others might seem odd to post later on (like pumpkins in December). Fall leaves and pumpkins is pretty borderline as it is. Soon we're moving on to Christmas with trees and candy canes, but in my book pumpkins and leaves are totally game up until Thanksgiving. Cool? You're okay with that? Good.
I had a slight obsession this year about going out to see fall leaves. I absolutely love the fall and the want to see all the fall colors overwhelmed me (and probably Josh). The first weekend we went out to find fall leaves, I thought we'd find them at Bellevue Botanical Gardens. I found out about it in this article about fall leaves in Seattle. Makes sense, right? Wrong! We saw some but not much. Severely disappointing. I think I complained so much that Josh promised to try again the following weekend.
So the next weekend we ended up going outside of Seattle to Snohomish's Lord Hill Park. We had a heck of a time finding it, and when we did find it finally, it started to rain. You'd think I was kidding, but I'm not. But we did get a few minutes on walking in, though. And there were some fall leaves. Unfortunately, I think what I had in my mind was like this (click to see), and what I got was what you see in my photos below. Someone probably should remind me that we don't live on the East coast...
As you can see, there were some leaves & some colors, so we found some fall. But you know what was annoying? Well, when we'd drive around, I'd see all sorts of fall leaves on trees along the road. Gah! I really wanted them all clumped together in a park where I would frolic around in glee and take awesome photos. No fall frolicking really happened, but my must-see-fall-leaves obsession was slightly abated by the end.
With my fall leaves fixation (somewhat) taken care of, we turned next to our hunger needs. We ended up at a place, or should I say bus, called Old School BBQ in Monroe. Yes folks, this was a bus turned into a restaurant. One bus was for the ordering and the kitchen, and then there was another bus for dining. How sweet is that? And the BBQ was delicious to boot.
Talking about things I get fixated on...pumpkins. And not my pumpkin eating obsession, but the pumpkins themselves. When I was little my parents would take my sister and me to Bates Nut Farms. I just loved it. Even thought I'm not a kid, and we don't have kids, I still wanted to find a pumpkin patch. I'm weird & I'm aware of it.
After lunch it was raining, and I decided we should squeeze in a pumpkin patch to our day (Craven Farms to be exact). But it was raining pretty hard. I told Josh we'd just drive there and if it was still raining, we'd skip it. I tell you, it was destiny. The rain stopped and the sun came out right as we pulled up.
But it was MUDDY. Like, totally muddy. And wet. But look at the pumpkins....PUMPKINS!
Remember how I just said it was wet, well when I tried to lift the pumpkin the stem was soggy, slimy, and wet. Please note that no pumpkins were harmed in my attempts to pick them up (I know you're not supposed to pick up from the stem). The photos were only for show. But they were indeed quite heavy.
Yay! Pumpkins. Hay rides and corn mazes.
In one day we managed to find fall leaves and pumpkins. Not bad in a days work.
Maybe in December we'll go snow and Christmas tree farm hunting....(don't tell Josh)
