The Virtues of Fall

Fall is my second favorite season. My favorite is spring. But fall brings a lot of wonderful things along with it, and I don't just mean Pumpkin Spice Madness. Changing leaves, Thanksgiving, that crisp scent in the air, the cooling temperatures, sweaters, boots, warm socks, apple cider, burn piles and bonfires, fires in the fireplace, pumpkins, apples, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and that very first day you need to wear a sweater when you go outside.


Fall for me means breaking out all my hand-knitted and hand-crocheted items and bundling up! I have sweaters I like to layer with my ponchos and wraps. Hats and scarves and gloves. The socks I've been knitting all summer long that I can't wait to wear. Fall is a knitters dream. We gear up for it all year!

Another thing I love about fall is the early morning. I'm almost always up when the sun rises. In the Pacific Northwest, it's more often cloudy than not this time of year, and when it's cloudy, about half an hour before the sun rises, the sky turns the most extraordinary shade of royal blue. It's my favorite color and to see nature display it so beautifully like that is incredible.

And then, there's the food.

I've already mulled some apple cider in my slow cooker. I'll post the recipe for that next week so you can enjoy it, too. The first time I made it this year was about a week ago. It was so good, my husband drank almost the whole thing in one day. I only got two mugs out of the the three quarts of apple cider. His response to my accusatory, "You drank all that cider today?!" was simply to say, "But it's so good!" Well, I had to take a compliment where it was given. Next time I made it a few days later, I gave him a limit of how many mugs he could have in one day so I could be sure to have some.

I can take or leave apple pie, but fall is not complete without at least one slice of pumpkin pie, preferably at Thanksgiving. It's my absolute favorite pie. I don't really like fruit pies because I don't really like cooked fruit, but a good pumpkin pie is heavenly. And hold the whipped cream. I want to taste the pie all on its own. I might drool if I keep going on about this, but pumpkin pie brings me to something else I love about fall.

I'm not a crazy Pumpkin Spice fanatic, but I have a pumpkin spice-scented candle I really, really like. I just buy it at the grocery store, a local chain called Fred Meyer, owned by Kroger. The brand of candle we get is called Tuscany Candle. I get the Fall Festival candle, which is basically pumpkin spice. We also get the Vanilla Cinnamon Brûlée candle, which is fantastic is you love cinnamon like my husband, but don't want to get punched in the nose by a cinnamon scent like me. I burn those two like crazy all through fall. Ours are almost gone. I need more candles!

Ah, fall...
Photo Credit: blanscape via freedigitalphotos.net

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