This List Could Have Been So Much Longer and Could Have Included Many, Many Exclamation Points

To remove any doubt that I am, in fact, a dork and also to celebrate today, which is the First Day of Autumn, a list of some of my favorite things about fall:

Making pumpkin butter

Having pumpkin butter in the pantry


Eating pumpkin butter on wheat toast

Giving friends pumpkin butter

Saying the words “pumpkin butter”

Finding especially pretty fall leaves in the yard


Pecans in their shell

Thinking about cooking and baking for Christmas

The smell of cotton defoliant


That I can hear the Winona High School football game from my house on Fridays

That I can hear the Winona High School marching band from my house

Indian corn and pumpkins at farmer’s markets


Caramel apples in the produce section at grocery stores

Displays of cheesy fall decorations at discount stores

Soups, stews, gumbo

Needing to wear a pair of jeans because it’s too chilly for shorts

SEC football


Barn jackets

An extra quilt at the foot of the bed, rarely actually needed, it’s just the fact that conceivably, one could need it

Rows and rows of cotton blooming


Cotton pickers. I can smell the cotton we’d play in, jumping around in cotton trailers. It smelled like fall. Still does, just remembering it.

Making popcorn balls

Halloween


The idea of harvest

Sweet potatoes

Cotton trailers, although they’re a rare sight, having been replaced by newfangled modules

Candy corn

That other Halloween candy, that’s wrapped in the orange or black waxed paper and has a peanut butter center? LOVE those.

The State Fair

The lights at the State Fair


The sounds of the State Fair


The smell of popcorn, cotton candy, candy apples at the State Fair


Eating at the State Fair


Watching my son enjoy the State Fair, like I did when I was his age

Getting out fall decorations and putting them around the house






Putting the warmer, heavier table linens and bed linens out

That particular, incredible shade of blue sky found on rare fall days

Thanksgiving




Celebrating my son’s birthday

Fall seems like reading season

Fall also seems like baking season




Back to school time

Some of the happiest times of my childhood were in the fall

Generally speaking, it’s not hot in the fall

Daylight savings time ends (For the record, I don’t care which way it is and what time the sun sets, if it’s at five or six but I do not think we should get to switch that around back and forth and forth and back twice a year. Get it one way and leave it, forever and ever, amen. We have electricity and such now so we can see indoors when the sun sets.)

Cypress trees. Actually, I like those every time of year.

Sausage cheese balls on chilly mornings


Cotton fields

Cotton fields in the early afternoon when it’s warm and the day feels more spring-like than fall, rows being picked

Cotton fields at sunset, with the smell of fall and the anticipation of football games in the air


Just . . . cotton fields.

That one perfect fall day – and there is always at least one every year – where the temperatures are good and chilly, there is a slight breeze and the sky is an incredible, impossible blue – those days are the ones that make memories

Seeing acorns in the yard. I love those things. They’re so . . . autumn.

Pecan pies


Plum spice cakes

Deep fried turkeys

Pans of homemade dressing