California chestnuts and Fall friends

During the last week in September, we all headed to California, where Mama and Dada worked on their research projects and Caden was reunited with Cherrise, Ruby, and Scarlett at his California school. We were only there for four full days—Dada had to get back to teach in Massachusetts—but we had fun visiting with our Sonoma County friends. On our first morning at Bodega, we enjoyed a wonderful pre-fieldwork brunch with Susan, Bruce, and the Williams Lab. We also spent some time in Sebastopol, where we had fun exploring, for the first time, the site of Luther Burbank’s experimental farm. We also met up with Tessa, Brian, and Cormac at the Farmer’s Market, where we listened to bluegrass music and bought yummy tomatoes, peppers, onions, and tomatilloes to make fresh salsa.

The Saturday after our return from California, we headed up to Russell Orchards in Ipswich to pick apples. The place was pretty crazy—we weren’t the only ones enjoying a perfect fall day at the orchard—but we had a fun hayride out to the picking area and picked a peck of yummy apples. We especially liked the Cortland and Empire varieties. Caden loved the hayride and the apples. He had a great time sampling the different kinds of apples, and he even treated us to a performance of the apple tree song. The video clip below shows him singing the song in the orchard. For those of you who don’t speak 2-year-old, here’s a translation:

Way up high in the apple tree,
Two little apples smiled at me,
So I shook that tree as hard as I could.
Down came the apples, and mmm were they good!

"Mmmm, were they good!"

The following day, we drove south to Providence, where we met up with Heather, Jeremy, and Isaac at the zoo. It was a bit chilly and drizzly, but we all—and especially the little guys—had fun seeing the animals, including a quizzical crane, giraffes, monkeys, and, silliest of all, the anteater. Caden’s favorite night-time book right now is “Down By the Station,” which is a version of the traditional song set in a zoo. He was particularly interested in the animals from the book: elephants, flamingoes, seals, and kangaroos. After the zoo, we headed over to Heather, Jeremy, and Isaac’s new house for afternoon quiet time and a tasty dinner of farm-fresh stuffed peppers before driving back up to Swampscott.

Checking out the crazy crane

Hugs for Isaac