Ah, nostalgia.  A favorite word of mine, particularly this time of year.  I have passed my annual mourning period for summer and have fully embraced fall.  When I was a kid we picked apples off the trees in my Grandparents’ field…pressing cider, making pies and flinging rotten ones for the dog (a sharpened stick works well for apple flingin’). Pumpkins grew in the garden, and we tried to lay claim to our individual pumpkins early. At home fall brought crock pot dinners, planning for Halloween costumes and the men in the family plotting and planning deer and elk hunting trips.

Fall these days still seems to revolve around food…caramel apple pie and homemade mac-n-cheese (last weekend), split pea soup and pork roast (planned for this weekend).  I always buy a pumpkin, and the house is filled with the scent of Yankee Candle’s Pumpkin Buttercream.  It’s time to switch to flannel sheets and clean out the flower pots.  Cozy. That’s what the word that comes to mind when think of the autumns of both my childhood and adulthood.