BBA Challenge – September 2017– Autumn Memories

This month’s Challenge – September is one of my favorite months! As the leaves change, the smells in the air of apple wood burning in fireplaces, sweaters and shawls come out of the closets. Summer is over and we now venture into the next segment of our lives!

Like a child, I still love to kick up the fallen Autumn leaves that quietly crackle beneath my feet.  The Summer sun is declining, and a crisp freshness fills the air.  I look all around at Nature’s Beauty, Crimson’s, Gold’s, Orange and Brown colors seem to surround me as the trees changing colors take on an artist’s palette of Fall.  There is no season so radiant in its abundance of colors, as early Autumn.

Beacon NY, St John’s Rectory

Another one of my favorite memories was when I was young, my friends and I spending hours raking leaves into large piles.  Once that was done we would jump off the terrace ledge into the mountains of leaves we just gathered, only to have to start again raking the leaves into another pile.  Unfortunately, today, with everyone having leaf blowers, children don’t get to experience the joys of spending hours playing in the leaves!

Apple picking was and is still another tradition of Autumn’s arrival!  The memories of my grandfather taking my sister and I apple picking at Purdy’s Apple Orchard are still so vivid in my mind! Before we even got out of the car, we would already take in the smells of the many types of NY Apples, which would be our first adventure at the Orchard. After picking more apples than we could hold, we would end the day with hot apple cider, and warm homemade apple donuts.  Another tradition I shared with my own children.  Unfortunately, Purdy’s in Armonk NY, originally opened in the late 1800’s recently closed.  

                   Apple Orchard  – Modena, NY                     

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                                                  Warm Apple Cinnamon Donuts 

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention going on Halloween walks through the Nature Center; or going to the “pumpkin patch” to pick our own pumpkins.  Naturally, my children always seemed to want the largest one in the patch!

                   Keith in the Pumpkin Patch

Keeping the Tradition – Zachary in the Pumpkin Patch

(note the Hat – also in my Shop!!)

Fall’s beauty is like no other than that along the Hudson River in New York.  An example of this feast to our eye’s, is the picture below which I took at Sleepy Hallow Cemetery on Halloween a few years ago.  A perfect day as Fall’s colors of Nature paint an image of light as the Crimson, Gold and Orange Colors along the Hudson Valley, NY.

A View of the Hudson Valley from Sleepy Hallow Cemetery