Not that my post is about candy corn. I just happen to be eating some right now (it goes great with Hershey Kisses, by the way), and I know that people either love it or hate it. If we have it in the house, we can’t stay out of it. I guess it’s a good thing we can only get it this time of year.

Anyway, fall weather came right on schedule. There was about a 20 degree drop in temperature here between the last day of summer and the first day of fall. My mom and I were driving toward Columbia, South Carolina, on the first day of fall — it hit 97 degrees there on that day. Though we missed it, thank goodness. We left here on Thursday afternoon, spent the first night in Beckley, West Virginia, and arrived at our destination on Friday when it was a much more comfortable 83 degrees.

It was a short trip, unfortunately. We were there to attend my cousin’s wedding, and we left on Sunday morning and drove all the way back to Ohio. Didn’t get much sightseeing in, except for a walk around Harbison Lake and a visit to the Barnyard Flea Market.

At Harbison Lake, we encountered a couple feeding the turtles. The ducks weren’t interested, oddly enough. I had no idea turtles ate bread and carrots. (Is bread even good for them? It’s horrible for waterfowl.) Anyway, the trail there was really nice and it was a great place to work off our breakfast — we ate at Lizard’s Thicket just before.

I picked the last of the cherry tomatoes a couple days ago because temperatures are supposed to dip into the 30s overnight this week. I picked the last slicer tomatoes last week — still green, so I made fried green tomatoes for the first time ever. I used the air fryer setting on my toaster oven, and they were perfect.

I’m busy with some fall cleanup projects around the yard right now. Not sure I’ll get everything done before winter. But I need to be OK with that. I can only do so much, and there is SO MUCH to do. As much as I dislike colder weather, I’m looking forward to having some downtime from all the outdoor work. Though I really need to paint and get some other projects done inside the house.

Recent photos from around the farm:

I’m still harvesting seeds from some of my flowers. I packed two envelopes of yarrow seeds last week. I still need to collect calendula and coreopsis. It gives me a great amount of pleasure to harvest my own seeds for planting next year and to give to friends and family. I look forward to doing more of it in the coming years. I never bothered with it in the past, which is a shame because it’s so satisfying.