I've always called the beginning of autumn the start of our "social season." There's Dragoncon, and then today's event, the Yellow Daisy Festival, then Taste of Smyrna; following in October is the Apple Festival and the Friends of the Library book sale; and then on into Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Twelfth Night party, Anachrocon, and Atomicon. After that it gets hot and the only things worth looking forward to are 221B Con and WHOlanta (formerly Timegate). So it was because of the Yellow Daisy Festival that we were up at seven fifteen to have a quick breakfast and drive out to Stone Mountain.

I had found out a strange thing on the website: they weren't opening until 10 a.m. today. I thought it was a typo. We have been going to Yellow Daisy for at least 20 years and they've always officially opened at nine and if you got there early they let you in. This year they left us cooling our heels at the gate until ten. I hear the vendors were a bit pissed off about this, as they did business during those earlier hours. Anyway, starting an hour later was a drag, too, because we usually finish up about one before the heat gets terrible and we ended up leaving closer to two because of the delay.

Not that it was a bad day, despite the heat. We got all the way 'round and bought mostly food: some more One Screw Loose jellies, some low sugar/salt finishing sauces where the proceeds go to veterans, some crock pot mixes that contained no salt or sugar and were delicious, and the first installment of our twice yearly fudge from Ginny's. Plus two Christmas gifts, and I also bought another shadowbox setup from Country Pickin's. I have wanted a Thanksgiving one for years, but she never makes Thanksgiving, only fall and Hallowe'en. So I bought some fall things, and a few Hallowe'en things, and one or two other items, and a shelf that has pumpkins on it, and I will repaint the Hallowe'en and other things so they have a Thanksgiving theme (the hard one will be turning the rooster into a turkey; it will be a very small one).

Otherwise we sampled honeys and dips and soups, sniffed homemade soaps, admired the jewelry and the crafts, had some fresh lemonade, perspired and stopped for breaks, and, very last of all, had our usual ear of corn from the roasted corn booth. That was the sourest note of the day: the corn was terrible, tough and no longer sweet, and on my ear the kernels were half dead. Ugh. No more of that. We could have had lunch for what they cost us, too.

On the way home we stopped at Ken's for a late lunch (a burger for him and a grilled cheese sandwich for me), mailed my birth certificate request, and picked up a newspaper at Publix.

Saw something cute on the way home from Publix. It's still been in the 80s and 90s here, and not much fall is taking place yet. The tulip trees, which always have yellow leaves scattered among the green from summer on, have more yellow leaves than previous months, and the dogwood leaves are just starting to get that rusty look. But one little maple tree stood defiantly on Benson Poole Road, red blended to orange to yellow on one side, green on the other, as if it were saying, "I'm turning! It's fall, dammit!"

The rest was a long lovely end of afternoon in air conditioning, reading the paper, blogging, walking the dog. We had turkey salad for supper and watched 9/11: From the Heartland, Churchill's Secret with Michael Gambon and Romola Garai, and the news.

Labels: food, holidays, shopping, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:07:00 PM

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