Bringing Fall to Florida

How am I supposed to feel the seasons change around me if the leaves won't even change color? The trees have held tight onto all their green leaves. They won't let go or turn to shades of red, orange, or yellow. There's no chance of even a yellow-green and it's troubling. I guess I never really paid much thought to the autumn season when I knew that it was a standard part of the year. But now that it's gone I'm desperately trying to incorporate this lost season into my life as much as possible.

I'm bringing back fall primarily with the taste of Pumpkin. Yes, it's what we'd like to call basic, but I'd like to say I've exceeded this descriptor as I've tried everything under the sun that's pumpkin flavored including pancakes, oatmeal, donuts, and certain Starbucks drinks and I don't even drink coffee. Gerred also made 8 pumpkin pies to give to friends before we move because we want to share Fall that much.Word of advice, do not try the pumpkin Oreos. They taste like yankee candle play-dough. Just pick up a fall candle instead. I've got Autumn Wreath burning right now and it is both heavenly and autumnal. 

Ever since we moved here I've been asking to go to an apple orchard or a pumpkin patch. Well, there are no apple orchards in Florida, so we set our sights on the pumpkin patch. We visited Sweet Season Farms in Milton and I discovered just how Florida does their version of Fall.

Sweet Season Farms had a corn cannon, an animal barn, and a hay ride. They also served a corn cob dunked a gazillion times into butter, seasoned in either salt, ranch, parmesan or old bay if you're me and handed out on on a foil stake. Gerred and I shared one but felt we were slowly dying of Paula Deen poisoning.

I will say Sweet Farms did have a fantastic corn maze. This year's maze was styled after the local masters champion, Bubba Watson. Do I know he is? No. But, what made the maze ah-mazing was that they gave us trivia passports to take with us into the maze. I took Girl Scouts and Gerred took Scripture. Good thing I love trivia games because throughout the maze we reached several marking points that would have you answer questions about either the Girl Scouts or the Bible and it would tell you whether to turn left, right, or turn around depending on which answer you gave. Luckily I was a Daisy, Brownie, and a Junior Girl Scout and knew how to direct us through the maze with my answers. For the record, I helped Gerred with the Bible answers as well and have Foundations of Western Lit I: The Bible to thank for that.

Where the maze was over the charts, the pumpkin patch was a different story. It was a joke and Gerred and I kept laughing at the fact that Florida's version of a pumpkin patch is a field with placed pumpkins probably from the grocery store. But Gerred had never been to a pumpkin patch and was happy with the one we visited. 

So even when I can't see "Fall" I can still seek it. In the meantime, however, instead of fighting the seasons I've decided to just accept I'm having an extended summer. So I'm off to the beach today.