Welcome to Fresh Picked Apples and Pumpkin Spice

Fall official starts next week guys! Who's excited? I know I am. Fall is my favorite time of year. There are bright colors everywhere, so many delicious things to eat, and of course Halloween! It's both nostalgic and a look towards the future.

It might drive me a little crazy how early somethings for fall start going up. Walk into any store that sells beer in August and you'll find an entire wall dedicated to the pumpkin beers (not that I should complain, so many different flavors). I started seeing ads for Halloween decorations in July. And pumpkin spice lattes are inescapable by Memorial Day weekend. It can be a bit of an overload.

So many different types of food in different shades of red and yellow.

Some days I want to stand on a corner handing out pumpkin flavored food. "And you get a pumpkin spice latte! And you get a pumpkin bread! Everybody gets pumpkin flavored things!"

It's amazing how we as a society have hyped up these fall foods and flavors. Sure all things Christmas are also inescapable (even before Thanksgiving) for a solid two months. I may occasionally want to bang my head against something when I hear the Christmas Shoes song one too many times.

Then it all suddenly ends. Banished into our attic spaces and closet storage until it is socially acceptable the next year to pull them out (roughly two months in advance of the actual holiday).

It's not that I don't think the celebration should go on forever, but sometimes the hype for the holiday detracts from the actual day for me. By the time I'm ready to celebrate, it's over.

I also might be a little guilty of celebrating too early. Making the first pot of pumpkin flavored coffee is always a treat and I love getting my first butternut squash of the season. Sleepy Hallow and Practical Magic are back on Netflix. I dig out all of the Vincent Price movies I can find. Suddenly ghosts and goblins are just as real as Santa Claus.

Maybe I like celebrating early because it seems so short. The time it takes the leaves to change their colors and fall to the ground isn't very long. The weather in the Mid Atlantic that allows the prefect balance of not too hot and not too cold seems to last even shorter.

Life is short and the things we enjoy in life can be even shorter. We all live busy lives that don't allow a lot of time to enjoy the things we love most. Maybe that's why we need Halloween and Christmas to last for nearly two months each (with a small detour for Thanksgiving in the US). It's to find that one moment where we can enjoy what we love most, even if it's not quite the right date.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. I'm off to eat some fresh made apple sauce (my first attempt, hope it's good).

Until next week.