Falling For Fall. Or Autumn. Take Your Pick.

I do adore Fall. 

Autumn. 

Whatever you call it. 

It gives you a nice respite from the heat of summer. 

Now don't get me wrong, I do love the heat of summer, too. 

As long as I'm near my pool. 

Or on a beach with the ocean or a cool lake within sight. 

But I must be able to see said water with my eyeglasses off. 

So, that liquid must be right there!

But, I digress. 

Back to Autumn. 

The cool mornings. 

The cool nights. 

The cool nights without mosquitoes buzzing your head and biting your neck. 

The girls and I played basketball last night in our driveway at dusk. 

It was perfect. 

My dad has been growing pumpkins the last few years. 

And he grew these ginormous gourds which resemble geese. 

Or snakes. 

Choose your creature, it's there. 

The girls have made some sort of gourd family. 

I have to shuffle my coffee cup around them each morning. 

They sleep in their beds made out of cardboard mattress, kleenex comforters, and cotton ball pillows right on our dining room table. 

I was told that these are "the twins."

I wonder if I have a can of pumpkin in the pantry?

I could make some pumpkin cookies this weekend. 

For some reason, they always taste best when made at the beginning of Fall. 

The smell of pumpkin reminds us of a certain time. 

A certain season. 

Memories are released and I, for one, walk around with a smile on my face when it's pumpkin season. 

It would be ruined if Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts had pumpkin this or that all year long. 

The corn came down across the street from our farm yesterday. 

Howard Buffett (Warren's son) owns the farmland. 

His giant green John Deere combines took it down within a few hours.

One minute it's up. 

And literally, in the next minute it's down. 

Halloween stores pop up around town beginning in September. 

The kids love to go in and get ideas for costumes. 

To get scared by the displays. 

Displays that get creepier each year. 

Our society isn't afraid of anything anymore. 

Which is both sad and frightening in itself. 

It's Corn!

I live in corn country. 

Cornstalks have always been a part of my scenery. 

There was a cornfield behind my house growing up. 

There was a cornfield across from my grandparents' house. 

The house that is now my house.

Corn is everywhere. 

And, when I moved to the big city to the north after college, I missed the corn. 

The watching and waiting and the color. 

The initial planting by the farmers. 

The waiting and waiting and please, go away monsoon. 

Don't you know corn needs rain AND sun?

And then the sprouts come up. 

And you're like "it's corn!"

Every year we exclaim "it's corn!" Like we've never seen it before. 

The deer come out to crunch on the fresh greenery. 

And it gets taller. 

And taller. 

And it's "knee high by the 4th of July."

Or, as the case is this season, it's "6 feet high by the 4th of July."

And it seems to get super tall overnight. 

One moment it's green and newborn. 

The next thing you know, you can't see around the stop sign at the end of the road. 

So, you do the corn creep. 

Creepin' up to see if a car or pickup truck are pulling around the bend. 

It will be gone soon. 

That's when you realize you've entered another season.

The smell of harvest. 

The dried cornstalks floating through the yard as the combine does it's work across the street. 

Bringing the corn down. 

To pay the farmer. 

And we all say thank you. 

For the colors and smells and adventure that corn fields bring. 

Thank you to the corn.