Pumpkin Spice Time

The pumpkin spice coffee has been percolating each morning for about a week now and I’m starting to pack up my summer sundresses. I don’t want to jinx it, but this might be the first time I ever manage to pack away my summer clothes before the following spring. I’m so ready for boots and vests and pumpkin spice lattes and crisp air and foliage and it’s not even Labor Day weekend.

I’ve always been a bit of a back-to-school, new notebooks and pencils sort of nerd about September but this year more than any other in my life I’m nearly giddy with anticipation for fall. Maybe it was the oppressive August humidity. Maybe it’s because I swore myself to hold off on “inside” projects until winter (and I’m itching to dive-in to the growing list). By the end of July, I’d pretty much given up on any hope of wrangling our expansive yard into any semblance of groomed paradise garden when my first round of poison ivy nearly put me off gardening forever.

But the last week of cooler mornings has been looking up fall window box ideas, snapping up Halloween home decor and doing my annual “I should get BANGS” in time for fall. Oh, and I need to work on my collection of plaid blankets so I can style them on a chair with a pumpkin like in the picture above. Obviously.

This recent fall obsession also inspired me to imagine booking a weekend trip for Brian and I to Mt. Desert Island in Maine so we can explore Acadia National Park to do all the romantic couple-y things we’ve not made too much time for since we had Emilia. Like sleeping in late then spending hours reading over a leisurely breakfast. Ahh, the luxury.

the Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia (credit)

I’ve always loved the sparse wildness of Maine. I couldn’t say why I’ve never gotten more into hiking since I don’t feel more at home than when I’m surrounded by forest. Embarrassingly, after consulting a map I was surprised to find that the area I’d set my sights on to visit, Southwest Harbor, was very close to Bar Harbor where my paternal grandfather’s family farm was many years ago. Further map inspection revealed that the whole lot of the areas I’d singled out for this romantic getaway were within easy distance to Acadia and separated from Nova Scotia by a mere ferry ride. (Sidenote, I’m a bit scarred by Nova Scotia after visiting as a teen. It was breathtaking and beautiful in its harshness but once you’ve seen ONE pine tree and gorgeous rocky cliffside vista you’ve seen them all.)

Anyways, I think my point is that I feel such an incredibly deep connection in my blood with this area of Maine that (despite my horribly poor sense of geography) I wasn’t surprised at all that I’d felt so compelled to visit this specific area as the weather started to turn cool. As much as I love spring and summer, I think I’m more of a true New Englander than I’d realized.