Yesterday AJ and I went to the farmer�s market and found all had changed. The day was chilly and gray. We wore sweatshirts to fend off the autumnal wind. Although the perennially sunny lemonade man was there in his Hawaiian shirts, gone were the peaches and plums. They had been replaced with bushel baskets of fresh apples, �just picked this morning,� and piles of colorful knobby squashes. We wandered up and down the path between the stalls, investigating the week�s options. We came home with a bushel of Honeycrisp apples, two pints of raspberries, yellow and green zucchini, green beans and some filets of trout. After parking our purchases in the trunk of the car, we wandered across the street to the pizza place by the train track where AJ ate plain noodles and I had an unexciting salad and we watched the trains go by outside the window.

There is nothing like that first crisp bite of a fall apple. The crunch is sweet and sour and echoes through your head with memories of autumns past.

The apple is such a literary fruit. There is Eve, of course, curious about the world, needing to find out for herself (with Adam, failing to take responsibility for his own actions). And there�s Atalanta�s distraction. But my favorite has always been Jo March, curled up on her old horsehair sofa in the attic with piles of apples and tragic novels.

AJ has not quite learned to bite the apple without prior preparation. His apples are sliced and peeled still. He doesn�t know what he�s missing. �Mommy, your apple is so LOUD.�

The last of the summer flowers are fading. The goldfinches are acquiring their winter plumage. The migrating ducks are piling up in the ponds like disgruntled tourists. The chipmunks are hiding piles of acorns in the planter on the front porch. And the leaves. AJ is counting them all. �Look, Mommy, there are FIVE on the porch. It MUST be fall now. Fall is Halloween and playing the Charge game into piles of leaves and almost time for snow.

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