Falling Into October

Flour covered every inch of the kitchen counter last night, and buried in its scattered dust were measuring spoons, spices and fingerprints. It was our first batch of pumpkin bread--a tradition which launches the season for us, as funny as that may sound coming from a girl in southern California.

It feels like summer, but alas, it turned fall this week.

And because of this, I feel compelled to rattle off everything I want to enjoy now that it's fall. Like fires and blankets and movies and cider, nature walks and baking and decorating and friends.  Even though it's ninety degrees outside right now and the closest apple orchard is a plane ride away.

I might not have golden fields or fiery foliage to tell that it's fall, but I have my own memories--rituals I want to recreate that rely less on weather and environment and more on effort and the need to keep up with this season, which happens to be my favorite.

Summer is free and alive, spring is renewing, and winter has the whole Christmas thing going for it, but fall? Fall is home.

This, of course, doesn't mean I won't go to the ends of the earth to bring a little bit of fall environment to our otherwise barren landscape (by barren, I'm referring to majestic palms and calming ocean--I'm exaggerating due to my current South Carolina withdrawl). 

My Top Five Fall Memories and Favorites:

1. Living in South Carolina when fall meant drives to the orchard, oatmeal apple crisp after dinner, and cider with our lunch trays.
2.  Warm sugared donuts 
3.  Building giant piles of leaves just to jump in them for a moment of satisfaction.
4.  Wearing tights--even in California, even if it's hot
5.  The Elementary School Leaf Project--saving maples and oaks and aspens between sheets of waxed paper, thumbing through leaf identification books, making crayon rubbings from my favorite leaves.