So far the votes from the last post are 60% for both of us and 40% for me (sorry Mr. Cleaver & puppies), so in honor of your vote, here we are together:

But who took the photo, you ask?

Why this lovely lady, who accompanied us on our annual apple-picking adventure.

As other Maine bloggers have mentioned, the apples are super early this year. Since my favorite apple type (Jonagold) ripens a bit later than the first apples, we waited until mid-September, still several weeks earlier than usual, to take our annual trip to Ricker Hill.

The day was warmer than we imagined (hence the short sleeves), but it was a lovely day for apple picking (or slinging).

This trip is nothing is not full of traditions, so as per usual there were many dozens of mini apple cider doughtnuts,

plenty of tasty apples to pick,

(these look like cherries and taste like apples!)

a trip into the depths of the corn maze (dry enough to traverse the whole thing this year) --

including making it out alive (!!),

a race over the obstacle course,

and cute farm animals.

And I get to look forward to days filled with apple pies, crisps, muffins and sauce!

I am not alone in my love of fall in the blogsphere. It seems ever blog I read in is love with the colors, flavors, textures, and crispness of fall.

I love fall for all the usual suspects: apple cider, the sense of renewal, school supplies, the scent of the air. I also have a bonus reason to love fall: it's when I both met and two years later married Mr. Cleaver. So the fall is very special to us both.

So this past Saturday we engaged in some traditional fall activity and went on our third annual apple-picking trip. We really liked the orchard we had been going to in Illinois, so the standards were high for our first Maine venture. It had so have a few things: 1 - a wide variety of apples, 2 - pumpkins, and 3- (most importantly) apple cider doughnuts. Seriously, I live for my once-a-year shot to eat apple cider doughtnuts hot out of the fryer. I keep thinking about trying to make them on my own, but I think it might take something away from the experience. That said, and I'm not promising anything (having still not posted an actual S'more pie recipe), don't be surprised if apple cider doughnuts appear on this blog in the next month or so.

Ricker Hill Orchards was a hit on all three points. Crisp juicy apples (organic and non), delicious hot doughnuts (weekends only), cheery pumpkins, and amazing views. Not to mention the fantastic play area.

Oh, and this is pure genius, they had giant slingshots for the rotten apples. See if you can spot Mr. Cleaver's apple in the photo above. The boy below's name is David (I didn't catch the irony until I was captioning the picture) and he asked me to take a picture of him, so I was happy to oblige.

David slings an apple