Via hokielover01 @ flickr (Go Hokies!)
Here in the Northeast, we just got our first real shot of serious cold weather. It was not a warm summer, but it lasted for a while. Finally over the past week or two, fall rolled in. As I write this, my radiators are coming alive for the first time in months, banging and hissing like…I dunno. A box full of snakes with hammers? Plus, we’re getting a full-on nor’easter, complete with cold, driving rain that has turned to snow where my little brother lives, two hours northeast of NYC. Oh yeah…autumn has arrived.
It is not my favorite season, I’m afraid. I don’t like the shortening days, which have me getting up in the dark and coming home in the dark. I like spring flowers better than autumn leaves. I’m much happier in warmer weather and prefer sundresses to wool sweaters.
That said, there are definitely things I love about fall. Crisp apples and bright orange butternut squashes at the farmer’s market. Football. The way the one tree right across from my living room window turns flaming bright red. Pumpkin muffins at the local bakery. My all-time favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. Plus, I’m off to a wedding in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley next weekend, where the leaves will be at their brightest and love will be in the air.
What’s your favorite thing about fall? What are you most looking forward to this fall?
I love the nip in the air and the feeling of coming winter. I think its because I like change, I get bored with anything staying the same for too long! I also love Fall food and sports, its all so cozy!
I actually think fall is the prettiest season. At least in Michigan, the colors are really beautiful and its not super cold yet so you can be outside and not freeze. Unfortunately we seem to be jumping right towards winter up here, it’s been in the 30s all week. 30s!
Oh! and normally when its not such a cold fall I like running outside. Easily my favorite running weather. (normally)
I love being able to get dressed in the morning and trust that what I wear will still make sense by the afternoon – I hate bundling up for a (relatively short) commute and then roasting on the walk home. Today I threw on my absolute favoritest 3/4 length leather coat and a sweater it was awesome.
I also love to leave my room cold and have lots of comforters and quilts on my bed so I can be as toasty or cool as I want.
Also, apple cider
Growing up in upstate New York, fall is my favorite time of year. I love the colors and the SMELL. The smell is the best. Throw in weekends full of football games, apple cider, cinnamon-y baked goods, and soft warm clothes? Perfect. I love knowing that fall means other holidays are coming, as I always get warm and fuzzy thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. And bluebears, fall is the best running weather ever. Being in NoVA/DC now, not so great. But I’m trying to make the best of it.
This current weather in the NE is ridiculous–I love the fall weather where it’s acceptable to wear a sweater and maybe a light jacket when going out in the evening.
Other things I love about fall: tweed, houndstooth, figs, McIntosh apples (and apple Betty), snuggling with a light wrap on the train ride or in the office, and the return of soups into weeknight meal rotation.
Colorful leaves, sweaters, sweatshirts, snuggling up under a blanket, cider, soup, not sweating bullets… the list goes on. Fall is my favorite season but sadly it seems to get shorter every year.
I’m with Marigold: it’s the smell. I huff October. Fall is my favorite.
And cozy evenings with almost any combination of the following: cider, whiskey, pie, a book, a movie, a bath, a cat, the Dude, blankies.
I love sweaters, jackets, coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. Winter clothing is just so much more interesting than summer clothing!
I also love harvest-y produce like winter squash, apples, and pears. I made an awesome roasted pumpkin pasta dish last weekend that made me very, very happy. The smell of roasting pumpkin and sage was sublime. I posted the recipe and photos here, if anyone’s interested. http://jennyknopinski.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/recipe-roasted…mpkin-rigatoni/
Fall is my favorite season! I love Halloween, everything pumpkin (esp. pumpkin coffee), and even that it starts to get a little darker and colder, so I can come home and hide from the world under my blanket. And by blanket I mean Snuggie. Oh, and cooking heavy, cold-weather food. I have chicken stock going right now.
Fall is my favorite season, too. I love the weather. And upstate New York falls are the best! This season is particularly beautiful–I think the trees are changing more slowly, and more vividly, than they have in recent years.
The best thing about fall, for me, is my grandmother’s pumpkin soup. I clean her house for her every friday (and I use the word liberally, because I dust non-dusty shelves and wash clean mirrors, but it’s our time to hang out and spend QT together, and also she can always send me home with some toilet paper or spaghetti sauce, which makes her feel like even though I’ve moved out of the official homestead of my extended family, I’ll be ok). And she made pumpkin soup yesterday and I read this post while eating a bowl! It’s amazing, with kluski noodles and cream and cinnamon. Ahh.
I also love the smell, using my slow cooker (especially because my farmers’ market in my town has really ridiculously cheap organic, pasture raised heritage meat which tastes sooo good), carrots, apples and applesauce, walking my dog and standing under trees and looking up at the middle leaves closest to the trunk, which change color first and look like the skeleton of the tree. And snuggling! With kitties, dogs, or humans!
Ah this is my favourite time of year. I love the smells, the leaves, the fact it rains a lot, the dark coming in, the snap in the air, the fact that my birthday is a month away, the colours, all those oranges and reds and browns, and now I’m in New York I love the whole insanity about Halloween which I never really knew about until I came to Brooklyn. It’s the craziest shit i’ve ever seen, all the houses round here are already decorated or begining to be and it makes me laugh.
Plus i like autumn food, soups and slow cooked braised meats and roast fish with pumpkin mash and lots of beets. Mmmh and I get to curl up at night and read, mind you I pretty much do that regardless of the year. Oh and i also love autumn because of the clothes, I’m always so hot in summer but now i can wrap up and wear dark tights and boots and pea coats and hats. Definitely my favourite season.
I love fall. I love wearing tights and suede and sweaters and I love the fact that it’s cool enough that I’m not completely miserable within five minutes of stepping out of my apartment.
Plus, I love baking, and in my un-airconditioned apartment, it’s just not fun during the summer (which doesn’t necessarily stop me). So far since the temperature dropped I’ve made an apple spice cake that was a bit of a fail due to the fact that I took it out of the bundt pan a little too early. I have extra apples from it, so this weekend I’ll be making apple crisp. And Hungarian mushroom soup. And chicken pot pie. Next week? Black bean soup in the crock pot.
Fall is also my favorite season. I love the smell, the crispness in the air, the switch to hearty, comforting food. We’ve pretty much gotten short-changed on fall where I live, though. It’s been really cold since the last week of September, and last Friday we got several inches of snow. It’s finally melted and we’ll have more fall-like temperatures for a few days at least, but the snow took it’s toll; we’re pretty brown and barren already. Thankfully, the weekend before our weather went to hell, the bf and I jumped in the car for a spontaneous road trip to Aspen. We didn’t get the full effect of the fall colors, but it was still gorgeous!
Ratinski, I am getting in a car RIGHT NOW for some of your cake, crisp, and/or soup. And I’m swinging by Cimorene’s for grandma’s soup, too. Damn.
God, I’m starving.
BeckyS, I agree with you about getting up in the dark. But I do love the energy you get with the coming of fall (or at least I do). It gives me the feeling of starting over, which is one reason why having our new year in the fall really works for me.
I drove across Pennsylvania and back 3 times in the last month, so I got to see the leaves change. The vibrant colors with mist hanging in the mountains…so beautiful.
And Thanksgiving is my favorite non-Jewish holiday.
So, here in SF, we had a giant storm on Tuesday (the first rain of the season, which meant people were driving like they’d never seen a wet road before)…and now it’s gorgeous. Like, today was completely sunny and in the 70s. So it looked like we were about to have fall, but the weather gods seemed to have changed their minds. I am looking forward to that fall smell, though! So yummy.