I love all four of the seasons that we have here in Vermont, but I must say that if I were pressed to pick a favorite, Fall would be the one that I like best. Now that I have children, I am able to share my love of all things autumn with them. Number one on my to – do list for this fall was apple picking.
Last Friday, my dad came to town for a visit. I thought that apple picking would be the perfect way for us all to spend an afternoon together. Unfortunately, none of the apple orchards were open yet so we ended up going to a children’s museum instead and had a great time. Some orchards opened over the weekend, including one that is only ten minutes from my house.
This afternoon it was cool and cloudy, but I thought that it still might be a nice day to pick some apples. When I asked Dylan if he wanted to go apple picking he got very excited and ran right to the door. He said “Is it apple time now?” and as I told him that it was, I realized that I had been talking for weeks about how it would be “apple time” soon. We drove to the orchard, and as we got near it I noticed that there were big, red apple signs to point us in the right direction. That added to the fun and excitement because as I pointed to the first one, I asked Dylan to help me find the other signs so that I would know where to go. He was more than happy to let me know when he saw them, in his typical exuberant way.
I parked the car and we walked to the little farm stand to get a bag. Dylan was so excited to get “we own bag” to put the apples in and he was even more thrilled when he found the apple picking poles. I breathed a deep breath as he picked up one of the poles and hoped that he would not cause too much trouble with it. Fortunately, he enjoyed picking apples on low branches as much as he enjoyed trying to use the pole to get apples that were up high. We had so much fun, and I enjoyed seeing him beaming with pride as he picked some apples with the pole and others from the branches. I put a few apples into the bag, but I mostly let him pick them because I did not want to get too many. After all, if we use up all of the apples that we picked today we can go back again and pick some more.