See you in September, see you when the summer's through......

Tomorrow is the first day of September – my favorite month of the year. It's the month my kids were born, fall is in the air and the weather starts to cool down, kids go back to school, football starts, the new tv season starts, leaves start changing colors, nights are cool enough to use the fireplace, the leaves fall and get all crunchy – even at my age I take delight in stepping on them and hearing them crunch. I have to walk a couple of blocks from my car to my office and there are some incredible trees that have bright orange and red leaves on them in the fall. Each day a few of them wind up in my office. Since I don’t have a window, it’s my little piece of the outside. And I buy candy for my office in nice autumn colors (got two bags just yesterday!).

At home I drag out all my Harvest Spice and Fresh-Baked candles and look forward to the days getting a bit shorter so I can light them every night. And I so enjoy decorating my house for fall. In fact, between Halloween and Thanksgiving, I probably have more autumn decorations than Christmas. We have a huge pumpkin patch close to our house that the kids and I have gone to every year for the 20 years we’ve lived here. Now we have Jenni’s kids to go along with us making it even more enjoyable. I always get a big dried cornstalk for my front porch along with a variety of pumpkins and gourds for decorating the front of the house.

One year I also got a bale of hay which made for a great decoration. It could stay there year round – for Christmas I would cover it with wrapping paper like a big gift, for Easter I would put some wooden bunnies and baskets of eggs on it. Summer maybe some fake flowers and Americana things like watering cans, metal tubs, etc. The rest of the year it pretty much just sat there. Turns out it’s not easy to get rid of a bale of hay! Oh, I suppose I could have rented a couple of goats or cows or whatever animals eat hay and let them graze on the front porch. But somehow that didn’t seem quite fitting. So it became a rotating holiday display for a couple of years until I really got sick of it. Finally one of my son’s friends hauled it off for me. And, underneath, there were all these little bugs. No more hay bales. But I still have my traditional corn stalk

When Ed and I got married in 2002, we went to New England for out honeymoon and it was in the fall. One of my favorite memories was one day in New Hampshire. We were driving down a little country road, it was drizzling lightly and a bit chilly. We found a couple of covered bridges and the trees were such magnificent shades or orange, red and yellow. Suddenly we came upon an Apple Cider Mill. Went inside and the place was warm with dark woods, a big fire in the fireplace, big chairs to sit on in front of the fire. The whole place smelled like cinnamon and apples. They were making fresh apple donuts, apple cider, apple pies. So we got a couple of donuts and sat in front of the fire eating them while looking outside at the colors and the rain. It was awesome.

Luckily my daughter has inherited my love of Fall so we can enjoy it together. And we’re teaching her kids the fine art of collecting autumn leaves, crunching the dried ones while they walk, walking through the pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins, and the joys of sitting in front of the fire.

Welcome back, September! I’ve missed you!