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Friday, September 16, 2011

What I Love About Fall

Changing leaves, warm days, cool nights, snow back on the mountain tops. One of the most beautiful sights to me is a bright blue sky, yellow aspen leaves, and snow capped peaks, and sometimes a dusting of snow in the red canyons.

These are things I love about Colorado's falls, which I've grown accustomed to and love.

But, I will say, that fall in Ohio was my favorite season. I still miss the red maples. We don't get huge piles of fallen leaves here. I raking leaves in our backyard growing up. We hated it, come to think of it, but we did love raking the leaves into mazes or "houses" and we chased each other through them.

Then we complained that we had to put the leaves in bags. Blisters. I remember lots of blisters from raking leaves. Plus, the leaves in the backyard were from some nasty tree, not a pretty maple.

Whatever.

My Mom usually had a pot of soup cooking on the stove every Saturday. Chili, vegetable, bean. The whole house smelled so good. Then there was that time she put lima beans in the vegetable soup and we all freaked out.

Earlier today I went to the Food Network's website and they had a whole section about tailgating, and it reminded me that this is something else I miss about growing up in Central Ohio--football Saturdays. Specifically, Ohio State football. There is nothing like Columbus, Ohio, on a football Saturday. I'm a third generation graduate of The Ohio State University. On those Saturdays we were raking leaves and getting blisters, I remember my Dad having the radio on and listening to the game. I heard Archie Griffin's and Cornelius Green's names all the time. I even remember their jersey numbers (45 and 7). I can't remember my anniversary, but I can remember their jersey numbers. I don't know what that says about me, except that I might need to take some ginko.

I remember the first time I ever went to an OSU game with my mom took me. It was the era of Art Schlicter and Cal Murray, which will mean nothing if you're not from Columbus. But I loved it and every fall I'm a little annoyed that I can't get OSU football on TV, except for the rare occasion.

These days I get OSU football game updates from everyone on Facebook who puts the game info as their status updates while the Buckeyes are playing. Gives me some angst, but it's better than nothing!

What says fall to you?

3 comments:

M said...

Oh Ohio State....I was in color guard in high school and I loved watching their half time show to see who the mystery person who dotted the "i" in Ohio was :)

As for fall....I don't want it to come because we have not had summer in 2 years :(

Enjoy yours :)

1dreamr said...

I absolutely love fall - my favorite time of year. Cooler weather, turning leaves, the smell of fireplaces in the crisp air, apple season, cider, mums, and the return of football!!

I am already feeling my nesting instincts kick in, and for me that includes comfort food. I'm really going to have to dig deep to maintain my daily caloric intake levels. Honestly, in my perfect world, I could eat whatEVER I wanted and maintain my weight. Can you say FANTASY.LAND. ???

Karen said...

You are making me miss Columbus and the OSU days!!
Fall in Connecticut is really beautiful too. I hope to go apple picking today and make apple crisp for dessert with vanilla ice-cream yum! Also guess what's for dinner? Chili. Did you see I finally got on facebook?
Miss you

Karen Czapla