The Wholly Roaming Empire
Thursday October 25th 2007, 11:34 am
Filed under: Life

Catoctin Mountain OrchardBefore I say anything else, I want to offer my heartfelt sympathy and wishes for the safety of those in San Diego and thereabouts. And for there to be just enough rain there to be of real help.

Karen said in the comments, before we got to DC, that we needed to go to Catoctin Mountain Orchard, which is next to Cunningham Falls. creek and falls at CunninghamWell, yeah!

Catoctin, back in the day, was one of the first places to go for the pick-your-own crowd: use their containers or weigh your own first, and then weigh the containers again when you get done. What little kids don’t like a day of climbing in trees? And how often do their parents encourage them to do that at home? Strawberries, on the other hand, were bend-over-till-you’re-stiff type of work, but they were our favorites and we picked a lot of them.Catoctin pumpkin and apple

I don’t know if they still do that; I do know that, since I left home, they built this beautiful farmstand. (And there’s a local photographer who sells beautiful framed prints there for a very reasonable price; I got one a few years ago of mountain laurels, one of my most favorite flowers and one that I have never seen in California. I miss them. I keep it next to my knitting perch.) Karen bought a half bushel of Empires to make applesauce with, and we split it with her and took some home to the folks.

I asked my mother-in-law, and she told me where her scale was. One pound even. one pound Empire appleWow. Karen snapped this shot for me with her pumpkin and an Empire on her doorstep.

And yes, we went to Cunningham Falls. The creek was mostly dry and the falls barely there; the drought back East is pretty intense.Cunningham Falls handicapped access walkway

Richard and I came home to a green lawn, revived by the rain that had come to northern California in our absence. To celebrate, I quartered and zapped the one Empire I’d brought home, cooked in deference to California’s produce protectionism till the juices turned to syrup and the whole thing into a dessert.Leaving Cunningham Falls


4 Comments so far
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On a personal note, I own both scales. Your recent yarn post showed my digital scale, formerly known as the Weight Watcher’s food scale. I have your Mother-in-law’s scale, too. It also has a longer, flat bit you can weigh pasta in. And yes, I weigh my yarn on the flat white one, in grams for accuracy. Seeing your scale pictures is like, “Oh, hello there!” VBG!

Comment by Barbara-Kay 10.25.07 @ 2:17 pm

Mine is a Weight Watchers scale and a memory or two. My lupus support group once moved to a new place; I walked in the wrong door in the complex, and found myself in a Weight Watchers group that was staring at me, till one person piped up, “YOU’RE not in the right place, are you?” Uh, no…

Someone we knew from church passed away awhile ago after a stroke, and her daughter, our age, spent weeks going through her mom’s things to sell her house. She announced a yard sale and pleaded with people to come. I did–and found that scale. So to me it’s a memory of Pat each time I use it. And, sometimes, of that wrong door.

Comment by AlisonH 10.25.07 @ 2:46 pm

It looks like a beautiful place! How wonderful to be able to pick apples. Yes good wishes the people in Sand Diego. We have had reports on the fires on our news here in Australia too.

Comment by vicki 10.25.07 @ 4:29 pm

I used to weigh manuscripts with a kitchen scale, but since that was the only thing I used it for, it didn’t make the last move. My mom got me a postal scale last Christmas. It weighs manuscripts that are small enough not to require a trip to the post office–and it works for small amounts of yarn to see if I can get two baby hats out of the one skein, etc.

Comment by Laura 10.26.07 @ 6:08 am



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