Well, it’s apple season so we went apple picking.  Jonagold, Mutsu, Golden Delicious and Fujis were the bulk of the apples we picked.  I also picked up some Arkansas Blacks at a farmer’s market, which I’d never heard of before, but was told they were good cooking apples.  I bought them more because we had seen them on the trees at the u-pick place but they were roped off for a school group to come pick… and they looked so bizarre… all these black apples hanging off a tree.  We though they were rotten at first.  Of course, the ones I got at the market are simply dark red… not even close to looking like black.

I’m always amazed by the food up in Black Mountain.  Local, fresh and delicious.  We asked around at a morning tailgate market for breakfast suggestions and were referred to a few places.  We chose Sprout, a little place that used to be a garden center.  The food was all locally grown, the coffee was locally roasted, and all of it was great.  While sitting down to breakfast, we began talking about what we should do that day.  A couple of ladies heard us and started to run down a list of things we could do.  So by the end of our meal, what looked to be a quiet Saturday in Black Mountain, turned into a busy day all over the area.

So now, I have a fridge full of apples.  So I guess tomorrow, I start making pies… and cakes… and perhaps a tart or two. Will post photos if they come out pretty enough.

One thing that occurred to me while at the cabin was the noise at night. There isn’t any. It is completely silent. Right now, at home, the cicadas, frogs and other insects are almost deafening… at the cabin, there wasn’t a sound. You see, this is my first time at the cabin in the dead of summer. We usually go up for the leaves in October and spend Christmas there… both times of the year where I suppose the noises of insects don’t really register… but as we sat on the porch overlooking the valley towards Black Mountain and enjoyed the cool breeze, there wasn’t a sound to be heard… except a couple of cats fighting. Very rarely do we get to experience that, the noiselessness… not the cats, cats fighting are sort of ubiquitous.

Well, the traffic circle still continues to confound me… perhaps when it’s all complete, I will catch a glimpse of the genius behind the plan. Until then, I believe I will continue to shake my head in disbelief whenever I circumnavigate my way around this ‘circle’.