First My Frog, Now My Pumpkin

 Hi, Friends.

Long time, no blog! There's been quite a lot going on in my life. If you know me, then you already know. Heck, if you follow me on social media at all then you already know, too. I'm not going into it again here.

We have more important things to discuss. Like my pumpkin.

It snowed here last night for the first time this winter. I'm not a fan of snow -- "chunky rain" as I call it. I will grudgingly admit that it is pretty at first. Otherwise I'm over it. 

So, this morning I went outside to take the obligatory First Snow! pictures that people post every year. (You can find them on my Instagram if you're really curious.) It was all going well until I got around to the front of the house and saw this:

And we'll have Halloween on Christmas

That's actually what I was going to post on Instagram, until I took a second look.

Yeah. I did not leave my pumpkin in the street. It had been very happily chilling on my front steps with my four other pumpkins since Halloween.The other four were still on the steps. (I've brought them inside now. It's time for them to go take a rest until next year.)

The carved pumpkins came in after Halloween. The green circle denotes where my pumpkin had been living.

The pumpkins are foam. Just felt the need to explain that I didn't have slowly decaying pumpkins as decor to welcome people to my home.

As you can see, Road Pumpkin was right side up in the street. If it was the wind then I would have expected to be chasing Road Pumpkin and its brethren all over the street, scooping them off of the neighbors' lawns and bringing them home. Nor do I think it was the neighborhood wildlife. We have a lot of critters around here. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit, but I'm pretty sure they would have just knocked the pumpkin off the steps and rolled it around. 

No. This reminds me of the morning back in my May when my guitar-playing frog solar light was found busking in the road.

He was really quite talented. Clearly had a fan.

He had been happily living on the side of my front lawn, a spot he had hung out in for multiple summers without ever feeling the need to stretch his legs and take his talents on the road.

Sadly, he is no more. After his exciting adventure in the world of busking, something or someone stepped on him and cracked his light. Rest in peace, buddy. 

The point of all this, Friends, is that I don't know what the hell is going on. I could see someone wandering down the street and deciding to be an ass and move guitar frog in May when it's relatively warm out. Who the hell goes wandering the streets on the night it snows for the first time and moves a single pumpkin? Like nothing else on the entire street seems out of place.

And the only other time anyone has touched my pumpkins at all, ever, was a few years ago. A less than sober gentleman was stumbling his way down the street one fine autumn evening. He was mad about something, picked up one of my pumpkins and tried to smash it on the ground while yelling, "Stupid pumpkin!" He was very confused when the pumpkin did not smash, but bounced. He did this for several minutes, as I was inside contemplating whether or not I should call the police. Eventually he gave up, waved his hands in defeat and staggered off down the road. But even the drunk guy left the pumpkin on my lawn! He was totally going to smash it, but was polite enough to do it on the lawn and not on my sidewalk.

So let me hear your best guess! 

Super talented wild life that can gingerly pick up the foam pumpkin by its small stem top and deposit it standing upright in the street? 

Random animal knocked it off the steps and it just so happened to roll into the road and land upright?

Someone is messing with me, but they are taking their time and only messing with my lawn decor once every six months?

A very, very precise wind blew through and only moved that one pumpkin off of the front steps?

I'm all ears for your ideas.

Fun at the Farm

Hey, Friends.

What do you do on a beautiful October day when you don't have to work?  You go apple and pumpkin picking! Well, that's what my friends and I decided to do today. Where did we go?  To DuBois Farms, of course!  That's where I always go when I have time.  It's lovely. (Full disclosure: my friend's sister and her husband own the place.  I'm slightly biased on this topic. You should still go and check it out if you live in the area -- it was voted Best Pick-Your-Own in the Mid-Hudson Valley.)

Seeing as it is a farm and all, we decided our first stop had to be the petting zoo to see the animals.

The baby alpaca is adorable when it runs!

Pigs, having a snack

Then it was time to get down to business and pick some apples!

Yeah, we aren't reaching those.

Yeah -- people really are assholes and will just throw them on the ground.  Poor apples.

We can totally reach these, though!

Someone (who shall remain nameless) decided that she really wanted the red apples that were near the top of the tree.  What to do?  No sticks to pick them with, so I volunteered to be the Official Tree Climber and Reacher of Red Apples.  I may also have been the only one crazy enough to have volunteered to do it.  

I am up there...I just blend.  Like apple tree camouflage.

We also picked grapes.  Well, mostly I picked grapes.  Way more grapes than I probably need, but I love them so they will be eaten.

Yum!

You can't go and not get a pumpkin.  It's October.  Kind of required to go pick a pumpkin at some point.

So many pumpkins!

I picked mine because I liked his stem.  

So cute, and happily living on my front steps.

They also had flowers that you could pick.  Sadly, the sunflowers are no more, but they still looked pretty cool in my opinion.

Former flower

The other flowers were gorgeous:

Flowers on the farm

The butterfly agrees!

So, two of us decided to pick bouquets.  They really were beautiful flowers.  Let's start with mine, shall we?

I think they look cool.  I had another reason for choosing them as well.  I'm pretty sure that when I inevitably forget to water them and they die, they will look good when they are dried.  That's thinking ahead, Friends.  I recognize my weaknesses, and one happens to be keeping flowers alive.

Our fancy bouquets!

I believe the conversation that followed went something like this:

Friend: Take a picture of both of them!  My flowers are so pretty!  Tammy, it looks like you just picked a bunch of thistles!

Me: Just two different styles. My flowers are awesome!

We are so mature.

My flowers are awesome.  Jut admit it.

It was an excellent day!  We had a great time, ate some delicious food, and enjoyed the gorgeous weather.

I will, however, remember to bring a hair tie next time.  It was a tad bit windier than I had anticipated, so I spent a lot of time trying to keep my hair from doing this:

Definitely need to pull the hair back next time.