October Harvest - All For The Love Of YouAll For The Love Of You

Sisterly Visit

My sister came East for a wedding the second weekend in October, and we got to see her for a few hours Saturday afternoon. We were hoping to take her on our annual pumpkin stand outing, but events conspired against us. The day was rainy, North had to review a show for Cappies, and Sara had to leave earlier than she originally thought because she didn’t realize she was invited to the rehearsal dinner. So that left us a three-and-a-half-hour gap when everyone was available, but it was nice to see her anyway. When Sara comes East, we mostly meet up at the beach, or before our mom moved West at Mom’s house, so she hasn’t been to our house in twenty years. We showed her around the house (she admired the newly yellow kitchen walls and the not-so-new kids’ self-portraits from preschool on the living room walls). I took her through the front yard full of Halloween decorations and the mostly moribund garden out back.

Then we had a leisurely lunch at Busboys and Poets, where she was impressed with the array of gluten-free options (I’d chosen it with this in mind) and then we came home and served her gluten-free mochi brownies Noah had made the night before and then we sent her on her way to Winchester, Virginia with a piece of gluten-free almond-flour cornbread North had made for dinner a couple days previous.

Last Open House

The next Tuesday there was an Open House at North’s school. This was a surprise because the school has not had them in years past, unlike all five of the other MCPS schools our kids have attended. (The first couple years I thought it was because of covid, but I later learned they just didn’t do it.) I have always enjoyed getting a glimpse of the kids’ school day, so when I found out it was happening, it was a given that I was going—the only question was how many and which periods I would visit.

It turned out the Open House didn’t cover the whole day, just the end of second and fifth, and all of third and sixth periods. Luckily, the classes I most wanted to see just happened to be third (AP Lit) and sixth (Mythology and Modern Culture), so I was having a hard time choosing the morning or afternoon block when I decided to do both, even though it was busy work week. I haven’t had a chance to do this since North was in middle school, and I knew in the future, I’d remember having gone, but I would not remember writing a blog post about adaptogens for a supplement company.

North has an abbreviated schedule with no first or second period class, so I commuted with them to school for third period. They take a bus-to-train-to-bus route every day, leaving an hour and a half before they need to be at school. We got there about half hour early, which is what happens when North catches every bus and train. We sat at the tables outside the school, and I ate the yogurt and plum I’d packed for breakfast.

AP Lit started with a warm-up in which the students had to write down an example of juxtaposition, euphony, and/or motif. The teachers asked people to share, and a few did, then she went over definitions and examples of each term on the electronic board. I noticed that the Emily Dickinson poem she put up for euphony wasn’t on the screen long enough for anyone to read and find where the euphony was. (I can’t help it. Whenever I’m in a high school English class I tend to think how I would teach it differently.)

Next the kids were asked to produce poems they’d chosen to bring to class to share and they rotated through pairs, reading their poems aloud for each other (or exchanging copies to read silently) then explaining to each other why they chose the poems they did. This activity also seemed rushed. I might have done fewer rotations in hope of achieving a deeper discussion. The teacher then asked for people to share their poems with the whole class, and a few kids did.

The last activity was silently reading an Amiri Baraka poem, “An Agony, As Now,” and annotating it in preparation for a timed writing on it the following class. I got a copy, too, and I have to say, it’s a hard poem. While the students were working on that, she had them come up to her desk one by one and pick a poet for an individual poetry project. One girl who had just read “The Road Less Travelled” out loud announced no one could pick Robert Frost because she loved Robert Frost, and she was calling dibs on him. It didn’t work. Someone who got called up before her chose Frost and the girl was put out. North later said she probably wasn’t that upset, she’s just dramatic. North didn’t get their first choice (Emily Dickinson) either, but they got their second choice (Anne Sexton), and they seemed okay with that outcome. At least they did not complain loudly.

I went back to the outside tables for fourth period while North went to computer science. I’d brought my laptop, and I thought I might work, but I read the newspaper and wrote some of this. North usually eats in the theater room, but they came out to join me for lunch. It’s nice they’re allowed to eat outside. The day was pleasant when the sun was out, but a little chilly when it went behind the clouds. I probably should have brought a jacket. There were kids eating at the picnic tables and on the sidewalk and throwing footballs around and one annoying boy kept trying to ride a locked Lime scooter without paying for it, causing it to beep loudly. North said, “That kid has to be a freshman,” with scorn befitting a senior. The lunch period is generously long, fifty minutes. (In my high school we only had twenty-five minutes.) We both ate and they did some math homework and we talked.

There was an information session for parents prior to the afternoon class block and I ended up stuck in for most of fifth period. You weren’t supposed to go to your kids’ classes until it was over. It was sparsely attended, as was the Open House as a whole. It wasn’t well publicized and as I mentioned, the school hasn’t done it before, or at least not in the last few years. The parents at the session skewed toward those with kids in ninth grade. In fact, at one point a mother introduced herself as having a ninth and twelfth grader and the principal joked, “but you’re not here for your twelfth grader” and right after that I had to introduce myself as the mother of a senior, which was a little awkward.

I managed to catch the last five minutes of North’s math class. The students are about to start a statistics research project and the teacher was explaining how to construct a hypothesis for it and what a null hypothesis means. North’s project will be to determine if schools in more affluent areas win more Cappies awards for their school plays and which categories are most affected. They got curious when, as a critic, they noticed how much more elaborate the costumes and sets are in wealthier schools.

Mythology was next. The vibe was more laid back than in AP Lit. The teacher spent almost the whole class going from small group to small group talking to them about their ancient Egyptian culture research projects. North was in the mummies group and the group told the teacher they were going to focus on the how-to aspect of mummification and how social hierarchy affected who was mummified and who was not. The teacher suggested they include information on canopic jars and the evolution of mummification techniques. The teacher obviously has a lot of enthusiasm for the material, which is always nice to see. I noticed some of the groups were getting off topic, though, when the teacher wasn’t with them. When I mentioned it to North later, they said, “Well, it’s an elective, so that will happen.” Seventh period was closed to parents, so North headed off to ceramics and I made my way home, walking to the Metro stop for the exercise and then taking a train and a bus.

Working Man

Noah was out of the house all day Thursday and Friday working. As of two weeks ago, he’s junior editor on an as-needed basis for a video production company in DC. In those two weeks, they’ve had him come into the office six days. So far, he’s worked on two projects, sorting footage from a conference into categories and matching different voiceovers to an ad for biofuels. He has no guaranteed hours, so it’s hard to tell how regular it’s going to be, but it’s good work experience and nice for him to have some money coming in, in addition to what he makes on the more occasional work he does for Mike. I think he must be feeling flush because he bought concert tickets for Royal and the Serpent and Nightly and he’s going to a live recording of the Nightvale podcast. The office is not near a Metro stop, so like his sibling, he has a long bus-to-train-to-bus commute.

Alluring Applications

And speaking of his sibling, they have completed three of their six college applications: to Johnson and Wales University (the culinary school in Rhode Island and their top pick), Saint Mary’s College of Maryland (the public honors college), and Aberystwyth University in Wales (yes, Wales). Towson University (another Maryland public school) is up next. They have been very organized and on top of this, getting the applications with November 1 deadlines finished before fall play rehearsals goes into crunch time, which will happen very soon. Yesterday they mentioned they’d forgotten to switch their career path from chef in one of the non-culinary school options, but then they said breezily that might just make them seem “mysterious and alluring.”

Pumpkin Day

Friday morning, the day before our rescheduled pumpkin outing, having had a sore throat and some congestion for a couple days, I decided to take a covid test. I was wondering if it would derail the expedition a second time. Would it have? I honestly don’t know. We were going to be outside for all the planned activities and maybe if I stayed away from the pumpkin stand, allowing others to go up to it and if I didn’t go inside the restaurant to pick up the food… I was already trying to talk myself into it, even though I was simultaneously thinking I probably shouldn’t be in a car with the whole family for a non-essential activity. But the test was negative, to my relief. That’s a very specific kind of relief that exists now, isn’t it? The, oh it’s just a cold relief.

We set out around 3:20, and traffic was heavy for a while, but we got to the farm stand in plenty of time. On the way, we listened to my Halloween playlist, which North downloaded to their phone because the Apple one we listened to on the way to Cedar Point has too many songs that don’t belong on a Halloween playlist, in their opinion. The downside of this was that we couldn’t complain to each other about the playlist, so we turned our critical eye to people’s Halloween decorations, or rather the relative scarcity of them. The ones we saw were quite nice.

When we arrived, were surprised to find the stand unstaffed with instructions on a laminated sheet at the counter explaining how to pay electronically. The whole set up was quite trusting, but apparently, it’s working for them. We loaded up the car with jack-o-lantern pumpkins, a soup pumpkin, decorative gourds, sauerkraut, apples, apple butter, apple cider doughnuts, and apple cider.

We’ve been coming to this stand since before the kids were born, back when the farm was located there and there were pumpkins in the fields, and a cider press and farm animals. (It’s moved out to cheaper land as the area has gentrified.) In 2018, we thought it would be the last time with Noah, but he came with us in 2020 when he was spending his sophomore year of college at home, and again this year, so I’m not going to make any predictions about whether it will be North’s last time or not, but it could be. Or maybe one or both kids will settle in the DC area, and we’ll be bringing our grandkids there. You never know.

From the farm stand we set out for Meadowlark Botanical Gardens for a pre-dinner stroll. It was a pretty day and we enjoyed the changing leaves, fall flowers and berries, the koi in the ponds, and the pavilion, arch, totem poles, and statues in the Korean Bell Garden. We also got a glimpse of the holiday lights in the shape of flowers, mushrooms, and small trees that are being installed.

As always when we visit these gardens in October, the place is teeming with dressed up teenagers taking homecoming photos. Between the girls in tiny dresses and teetering heels, the boys in suits, and a wedding party, people in formal wear probably outnumbered visitors in street clothes. It makes you feel undressed, taking a walk on a Saturday afternoon, dressed in khakis and a flannel shirt. We didn’t realize it when the wedding was in progress because everyone was up on a deck that was partly obscured, but as we were leaving, we saw the two brides in big white dresses and realized it was a lesbian wedding. It made me think about how when Beth and I had our commitment ceremony in 1992, it would have been quite daring to have it in such a public outdoor space. The world really has changed.

Sitting in a pavilion overlooking a small lake, we ordered from Sunflower, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant and our traditional dinner spot for this outing, and we went to pick it up.

We took it to the picnic tables at Nottoway Park, to eat. We used to eat inside the restaurant, but starting in 2020, we added the picnic component, and we’ve kept it, even though we occasionally eat inside restaurants now. There is a nice community garden in the park and after we’d had our fill of seaweed salad, dumplings, two kinds of soup, two kinds of noodles, vegetarian shrimp, sushi, and a stir-fry, we took a little walk down there. There were tomatoes still thriving and a lot of fall vegetables (cabbage, chard, collards, etc.) and zinnias in many of the plots. It was almost full dark, and a half moon had risen as we left.

Our last stop was for ice cream. We tried a new-to-us place, which I recommend if you’re local. I got half pumpkin and half green tea. Beth placed a similar order, half pumpkin, half coffee. I told her it was like a pumpkin spice latte in ice cream form. We ducked into a nearby CVS to look for candy corn, but Christmas had overtaken the store and there was none to be found. (Beth found some the next day.)

“Another successful pumpkin outing,” Beth said as we carried the pumpkins to the porch after driving home. Noah noted that none of them fell out of the hatch onto the highway.

“Is that the bar?” I asked. It isn’t, though. Even if we’d smashed a pumpkin or two, we’d still have had another chance to pick out pumpkins and autumnal treats, walk in a beautiful place, and eat delicious food together one more time. That feels like a windfall.

Here’s our October harvest: