My Favorite Season

     Fall always has been my favorite season.  Michigan provides a colorful backdrop for this time of year with its array of scarlets, golds, and crimsons adorning our trees.  Then there's that crisp autumn air that provides just the right sleeping weather at night.  And Halloween!  It's the holiday I look forward too the minute summer ends.

    About the only bummer this year is the collapse of my once mighty Michigan Wolverine football team.  They seem only a shadow of their former selves of late.  But I don't let that dampen my spirit . . . too much.

     Oh, there's fresh Michigan apples which seem more in abundance this year than last year when our favorite orchard didn't even produce enough to sell in quantity.  This past weekend we ventured to the orchard and picked our pumpkins and bought a peck of McIntosh apples, big, ripe ones.

     My mission this fall was to find one of those caramel apples dipped in chocolate.  Supreme decadence.  Usually they carry those supermarket but not this year.  The hunt was on.  I tried See's Chocolates which had an outlet at an organic supermarket in Ann Arbor  They said they didn't carry them presently but would take my phone number in case they began making them.

     No thanks.  I wanted one sooner.  I checked Kroger's and they carried something similar, toffee-covered apples.  Good, but not quite what I was looking for.  I did pick up a pack of Newcastle "Werewolf" beer on impulse.  You never know when you might be entertaining the wolfman this scary season.

     Speaking of scary, when I arrived back at the parking lot, I slid opened the passenger compartment door to stow my beer when I saw a children's DVD lying there.  What??  I didn't remember anyone giving me a DVD for the grandkids.  Wonder when that happened.  Then I saw some  beads I didn't recall having either as well as other stuff stewn about.  And, hey, who swapped out the carseat I had for something else?

      Ooops?  Wrong car.  Guess I should have figured that out before I opened the door.

      Wendy and I stopped by a chocolate factory up north that has chocolate covered blueberries, potato chips, marshmallows, pretzels--pretty much anything edible in fact.  But when I asked about chocolate-covered caramel apples, the proprieter said, no, they didn't have those.  He admitted it sounded like a good idea and said if his equipment were fired up and ready, he'd make one for me right then and there.  But, no, it wasn't.

    . . . sigh.

      I settled for Kilwin's in Ann Arbor, which is the same place I got my chocolate-covered caramel apple last year.  I don't like to do repeats though.  So instead of the dark chocolate-covered sea salted caramel apple I got last year, I got one with milk chocolate instead.  Guess that'll do for this year.

      Here's a couple pictures illustrating some fall fun.  First is my grandson Grant playing in a big pile of leaves I created just for him up north.  You can tell he enjoyed it.  Next is my creepy yard display which this year features a new coffin.  It's heavy duty too as you can tell.  Not sure what to do with it when Halloween is over.  Maybe it could double as a child's bed.  Don't know how that would go over with the grandsprouts though.