Fall market

Fall squash and pumpkins: aliens could hide in here (click any picture to enlarge)

Okay, this is dangerous: I'm going to head out to the Farmers' Market later this morning, but in the meantime I just browsed through last Saturday's pictures and decided to go ahead and make this post (my second) for SquirrelQueen's September Market Challenge. The problem is that there will most likely be pictures I will wish I had waited for. Oh, wait! It just occurred to me that I can edit this post if that happens. The market doesn't open for another hour, and I'm just antsy. The picture above has a couple of squash and pumpkins I don't think I've ever seen  before. The one in the lower left I am convinced isn't real and might actually be an alien.

I didn't realize until I saw some other pictures of pumpkins that they don't always end up all orange. Did you know this? The pumpkins, corn, squash and other assorted veggies are now dominating the market, with root veggies like beets and carrots dominating the scene, instead of luscious summer fruits and lots of leafy stuff. But they are still here, just not in abundance.

Of course, not everything in the market is edible. There are rows and rows of jewelry, crafts, handmade clothing, and artistic things like... rattles? I had no idea! These are so cool, and the artist says people buy them and put them on their coffee table. I looked at these and thought someone might actually try to EAT one, they look so good.

And Chele at Henna Moon was incredibly busy, painting hands, arms, legs, feet, you name it. These two young ladies couldn't have been older than their early teens, if that. Probably wishing they could get a tattoo and this is the next best thing. You leave these protected and unwashed for 24-48 hours, then the skin is permanently stained from the henna, which eventually wears off as the skin is replaced. I guess it's better than a tattoo if you're a parent; I wondered if these girls went home and proudly showed these off to parents who didn't know they were going to do this.

The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been incredible this fall, especially when I compare it to the other one I've experienced: last fall. This year is mostly dry and mostly sunny, compared to last year when we saw occasional peeks of sunshine in mostly cloudy and frequently rainy days. The meteorologists say this is caused by El Nino, which is setting up to be fairly strong. Amazing that warm waters around the coast of Peru causes changes in the weather up here. Makes me think of the butterfly effect in chaos theory.

 

Note: this last picture was added, as I suspected I might want to do, after my morning trip to the market. I was enchanted with the additional information on all the squash. My continuing favorite is the alien, which I see is named Galeux de Erysines. Pleased to meet you!
:-)