Ode to Fall

^ How I recently found a little piece of autumn in N. Ireland ^

Dear Autumn in the Midwest,
I miss you.  I miss your pumpkin festivals and brightly colored leaves.  I miss the football games I never went to and the sound of the marching bands off into the distance.  I miss the sight of pumpkins and dead corn husks on everyone's front porch, and the awful Halloween decorations that adorned the front yards of my neighbors.  I miss the sound of rustling cornfields and of campfires on a cold night.  I miss apple orchards and hayrides.  I miss apple cider and anything with pumpkin in it.
Oh how I miss pumpkin. 
I miss pulling out my fall sweaters for the first time, and those few weeks when it's too cold for a t-shirt, but too warm for a jacket.  I miss the anticipation of Halloween and everyone dressing their kids up in age-appropriate and not-scary costumes.  I miss Homecoming games...(did I just say that?).
I promise to never take you for granted.

Sure, here I have the sea and cliff.  I have a beautiful mountain to the west and a patchwork quilt of green fields at every turn.  Don't get me wrong - it's beautiful.
But YOU'RE beautiful.  And I will never again take for granted how you make me feel.  I promise to love you and your brightly colored leaves for as long as I live.  I promise to never down-play how amazing you are.  I promise that you still hold my heart cupped gently in the smell of harvest.

I promise next year I'll be back.  I'm not sure yet where, but I do know it will be somewhere with plenty of canned pumpkin just waiting to be made into every edible pumpkin concoction I can think of.

Until then, this crappy pumpkin latte I found will have to do.  (I know what you're thinking, how can you mess up a pumpkin latte, right?)

Yours truly,
xoxoxxo
Tiff