We went to Jenkins Farm in New Paltz this weekend to pick out pumpkins and pick heaving bags of apples with our good friends Lara, Shadrup and their daughter (who we just adore) Ruby.
David went rock climbing in the Gunks, so he was doing his “man against the mountain” thing, while we tended to the fall harvest. Lucy and Ruby are best friends (as you "can see from the pictures) and they spent the morning happily trolling through the pumpkin patches hand-in-hand and trying to haul enormous pumpkins out of the patch and onto the muddy road.
Watching them made me happy to have girls – no kicking the pumpkins, or shooting them with imaginary guns or trying to destroy them with their ferocious punches, just girls giving each other body-choking hugs and pulling each other in and over winding paths and stopping occasionally to re-latch their hands or have a brief conversation and then, peels of lovely laughter and squeaky giggles loft out over the wet morning air and they are running and then, falling into the soft dirt, still clasping hands and laughing so freely and without abandon that I want to run after them (But of course, I don't because no one wants to see a cackling middle-aged woman running through a pumpkin patch. It's quite enough to just be near them and their sweet, untethered spirits.)
Lucy was not so fond of the apple picking because it involved walking through what she referred to as the “icky wicky” which was a concoction of wet grass and mud that covered her feet and flip flops and felt, well, I’ll say it “icky wicky”. So, she stood on a patch of dry ground and Edie and I went and plucked plump McIntoshes off the branches and gave her armfuls to fill her bags.
We are now flush with apples and pumpkins and gratefully, friends. (Thanks Lara for "taking control" of the camera and sending over these great pictures!) Now, what fun things can we do with all these apples?...
xxxooo Kim
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