I move from Gin and Tonic to Manhattans.

When the weather starts getting cooler, I love to unpack my sweaters and long-sleeve shirts. It’s not quite time here to do that yet but it’s coming, it’s coming…

I image nebula in the Milky Way.

I buy a mini pumpkin and sometimes gourds and dried corn to make a centerpiece. I also used to give them to my mother and sisters.

Skip school to play video games in the local convenience store. Prepare for Halloween by buying extra chocolate bars for me.

We get family photos done outdoors in the fall. We also usually do a day-outing to a nearby park or mountain to see the foliage. One year we did a corn maize, but my anxiety didn’t enjoy that much.

I brew cider in the crock pot with cloves and cinnamon. I bake more.

I like to kick through piles of colored leaves that haven’t been raked up yet. I love the swishing sound, the dusty smell and the swirling of the reds, yellows and browns. When I was a kid, we jumped in the raked up piles, but I settle for kicking along the walks these days.

I put up fall decorations (not Halloween-specific; they’re good through Thanksgiving) and switch color schemes for table decor. The warm, bright colors of fall are a kind of seasonal invocation against the coming darkness. They’re also a nod to my perennial homesickness, more pronounced at certain times of year.

Going in the opposite direction (i.e., with rather than against the decreasing light), I also have a reversible bedspread that I switch over to the dark side at the autumnal equinox and the light side at the vernal; I just turned it last night.

We have a pumpkin festival that is really a huge arts and crafts festival that I go to every year.

My favorite part is changing the sheets and pillow cases to the warmer flannel.

As children, our human slaves used to collect acorns and chestnuts and made animals out of them with toothpicks/matches.

Dove season opening day, duck season opening day, pheasant season opening day, deer season opening day. There is also fall fishing and prepping my snowshoes and trap line for the coming winter.

I like to go to the local apple farm (well they aren’t just apples but apple time is their most popular time of the year) with my mom. It’s not cheap, but they have lots of unique goods and real kettle corn.

Creating Halloween costumes. I adore Halloween. We already have blood spattered windows and quarantine tape – torn – across the doors. More decoration to come.

The hubs has a friend who is a sfx artist, and he will be zombifying Jason. I’m going as a guest at Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Ian wants to be Sonic the Hedgehog.

@Seek_Kolinahr You need to post your costume.

Wow! Everyone has such great comments! @Seek_Kolinahr….I 2nd the motion to see your Halloween costume.
@hug_of_war….Yum! I love the real kettle corn you can get at fairs.
@Jeruba…I too, like to get out Fall colors as well as Halloween stuff.

Does anyone know what a wooly bear is?? Now that the cooler weather has set in, I have seen some wooly bears. I live in the Northeast by NH and they are a type of furry catepillar that has black on both ends and a dark burnt orange color in the center. Supposedly, they were said to predict how the Winter was going to be. That’s as silly as the ground hog predicting when Spring will arrive! Happy Fall!

Pumpkin Festivals, Apple picking, Apple Crisp, jumping in piles of leaves with sticky suckers, hiking, hiking, hiking

@blueiiznh…....I am looking forward to doing all of what you mentioned! I’ve recently moved and there are a lot of pumpkin festivals nearby that I am looking forward to visiting. I also need to find some local apple farms that sell my favorite…...I think they are called honey crisp.

@SnoopyGirl Mack’s Apples in Londonderry, NH sell them. I however have purchased all of them! Just kidding.

@blueiiznh Thanks for the link. I’ll have to check them out. Since you purchased them all, are you going to share?

@SnoopyGirl The bin is getting low , but happy to share.

@blueiiznh….Wow! You buy a lot of apples! Are you teasing me? Where do you keep such a big bin? And yes, I would enjoy some apple crisp right now.