our flash was behaving a little wonky but it just made things more atmospheric.
this year we did a dry run of what it's like to do it with kids. we learned: give them whatever they ask for. a really beautiful slideshow featuring zinnias, pumpkins and carousels was one of the rewards of the day.
what an amazingly beautiful place! we went with hopes of coming home with a witch hazel but they were all sold already. we got a christmas fern, a scented sumac, some honeysuckle vine and some other stuff i can't remember the names of.
it's amazing to think that this place is ten minutes from our home, and we had never been. so many lovely specimens. we walked around for awhile, after securing our purchases. everyone who works there is so nice. even the bathrooms are nice -- they reminded me of the bathrooms at fallingwater.
and you can see the philadelphia skyline!
they do a christmas cutting sale too at bartram's -- we will definitely be there for that. all the plants we bought today at this once-a-year event were included in john bartram's original eighteenth century census of the garden.
a new favorite place, for sure!
i guess it takes me the exact same amount of time year after year to extract my camera from my bag when we get to maple acres to buy pumpkins, and to yell "ben! turn around!" because i have taken this picture at least three years in a row now.
maple acres is the place to go for pumpkins -- they have so many different kinds.
pump(kin) it up!!!
when the zombies come, which we know they will, they will come to the cities. and ben and i will have to make fairly long-term plans to live elsewhere.
i want to live in newcastle delaware. we visit newcastle to go to oak knoll books but have become charmed with the town itself. full of 18th and 19th century architecture, it overlooks battery park and the delaware river. it seems to be very racially mixed, and just generally civilized: none of the overcommercialized bullshit of new hope or lambertville.
all we have to do is find a good sushi restaurant there, and we will be ready to move in. as soon as the zombies come.
and when you have had the same pair of sunglasses for six or seven years, the pictures look even more the same.
on the pier in newcastle delaware on a saturday afternoon, after a long saturday at a familiar maryland fairground.
oh, i've been doing this for years. sometimes he complains, sometimes he doesn't.
yay! this year we actually got a few growing. (i don't think i've ever yielded more than two, some years none). these are "halloween in paris" breed pumpkins. smooth and yellow. it's been a long haul, but i think it's gonna be worth it! it's always fun to try.
ben looks rather like a j. crew ad this afternoon, on our (fourth!) annual pumpkinfest at maple acres.
sure he made some amazing furniture -- but george nakashima also had a LOT of cute frogs, and still does, on his nine acre new hope, pa compound. it was a treat to talk to his son and son's girlfriend, and marvel at the furniture and the frogs.
From Japanese House in Fairmount park, and accidental video of two koi passing in the afternoon.
see "Zen Ben" at the japanese house in fairmount park!!
really, it's time we got a membership here. we love it. it smells amazing, the woodwork is like butter under your (paper) socks. no stupid tchotchkes, no ugly curtains. just simplicity and elegance. and koi. and peonies. and azaleas.
... said ben, as he drove me to my doctor's office in the northeast. then, after my appointment, no lie, this is what we saw.
the girls at krakaus market scoffed at me when i asked for poppy butter in november. but they had muffinki.
Back at Maple Acres, this time for gourds. Grey pumpkins, Cinderella (fairytale) pumpkin, white pumpkins and cheese pumpkins! (We picked one of each.)
Labor Day Weekend kicked off with zinnia picking.