We are having a lovely stretch of weather, partly cloudy to clear skies, warming temperatures with light winds (and that bit of chill in the breeze that lets you know it is indeed autumn). Stan is off to get a quick load of wood and then later to rake the hay he has down up at Melissa's.
I have some sunflower dye 'maturing' in the back room. This one was easy, pour boiling water over sunflower heads and let sit for a day or two, drain off the dye and let sit for a couple more days. It appears to be a greeny golden yellow, but the color of the dye and the color on the cloth are often two wildly different things. The sunflowers that I used are the tall native sunflowers that the former owners left us. They are perennial and seed like crazy. The flowers are about 5 inches across from petal tip to petal tip and have tiny seed heads, so I got quite a few in a 2 quart pot.
Erin and Jake and I picked the pumpkins last night. The vines grew where I dumped a couple of last years pumpkins and the fruit is an interesting mix of crosses between a warty pumpkin, a smooth pumpkin, fairy squash and zucchini. Two are long and thin (for pumpkins), some are a nice pumpkin shape with a few warts and some are upside down pear shapes. The one true to seed pumpkin that we had, a Cinderella pumpkin, was a lovely ruddy gold color on the up side and totally rotten on the down side. Most disappointing. The kids love the crazy pumpkin collection, though, so it's all good.