Mossy Cottage Knits

Girls' Day Out

(What’s worse than having to go to the mechanic when you are already mechanicphobic? Being told your car won’t be ready that day after all, being told a rental car is on its way, and being left standing in the waiting room clutching, with sweaty palms, the rental-car contract given to you by the mechanic, as your mechanic leaves, all the rest of the mechanics leave, the receptionist leaves, the cashier leaves, the lights are turned off one by one around you, you don’t have your car, the rental car hasn’t arrived, and you are fifteen miles from home. In your personal idea of hell.

It is, however, the next day and I have made it to home and back so, obviously, the rental car eventually arrived and I tootled home in a navy-blue minivan, six imaginary kids and one imaginary dog misbehaving behind me. And, five minutes later, six imaginary kids and one imaginary dog left by the side of the road.)

Normally I don’t participate in photomemes like “Saturday Sky” and “Eye-Candy Friday,” because I am, as ever, not a joiner, but this Friday I have too many marvy photos, courtesy of Eastern Washington, not to get sucked into the “ECF” photomeme vortex.

Our trip over the mountains two weekends ago was a sorely needed and perfect getaway. The heart of it was a “girls’ day out” in Wenatchee and Cashmere on Saturday with the “mother in law.” We snuck in a haircut for TMK—where I met Odie, the blue-eyed, bug-eyed Boston terrier who stared and stared and stared into my face as if he had been waiting for me all his short doggy life—a coffee shop for some java and astoundingly good lemon almond scones, a trip to a (remarkably feeble, even by Wenatchee standards) food fair, a trip to a yarn store, and a snarf-fest at my favorite barbecue shack, Country Boy's!

Despite its inherent feebleness—meaning, no lie, it was a food fair with no food booths—the food fair was located near and marginally associated with a farmer’s market, where you pretty much couldn’t take a bad photo. Really. If you had set your camera on Automatic, grabbed it by the wrist strap and swung it around your head, you would still have come up with images like this:

A mouth-watering mélange of late-summer and early fall fruits: apples, peaches and pears

More apples, straight from, need I say, local trees. They don’t call Wenatchee the Apple Capital of the World for nuttin’.

Multi-colored pumpkins, almost cartoon-like in their autumnal perfection

Luscious armfuls of dahlias. This dahlia fanatic says, "Swoon!"

Flowers cleverly and beautifully arranged in a hollowed-out pumpkin

And sweet ciders.

(Side note: On our way hither and yon, my eye fell on this, which just made me larf and larf. It’s almost as paradoxical and self-referential as the pressure-washing guy rinsing the hose off with the water from the hose.

)

Most importantly, however, we arrived home with 40 pounds of apples gleaned, with permission, from the neighbor’s orchard after the main harvest. The gleaning is a pantload of fun, almost like an Easter-egg hunt, with much yelling of “I see one! I see one! Dibsies!” and racing through the orchard and tripping, for the umpteenth time, over an irrigation sprinkler. Oh, and keeping a wary eye out for the very large coyote who has become a permanent fixture and is just biding his time until he can cook himself up some bichon-on-a-stick.

The results are beyond worth it—these beauts are as fresh, crisp, sweet and juicy as they look, my friends. Just the thought of eating one of them makes that place in the back of my jaw, under my ear, go all tingly.

I swore up and down to TMK that I would make applesauce with at least part of my personal 20 pounds but, yeah, they were long gone before I ever got out the nine bowls, five pans, three cutting boards, six spoons, eight forks, and four knives it would’ve taken me to make it.

Knitters and spinners alike, don’t miss this mind-blowing “Knit Me” blog entry from local knitter Sam (who, like me, has a boy’s name yet is so very not a boy).

P.S. Thank you everyone for the hysterical comments. I now know I am not alone in my, well, if not dyslexia, then dys-sew-ia and dys-cook-ia. And, yes, the doughnuts were delish!

Posted by Ryan at October 5, 2007 11:02 AM