Its not Autumn....its Fall!!

Well actually if you are going by weather, here in Ireland its neither.

Unless you count cold, rain soaked days as fall weather, which I don't. (I'm being a season snob and I don't care!)

In the states we call the season between winter and summer, fall. Here they call it Autumn. I personally don't care for the word. It almost sounds uppity to me. "Oh its Autumn....tra la la le da." (because thats how posh people talk. we all know its true.)

Every time I say fall though I am quickly corrected by the nearest Irish person. Typically this involves a slow head shake as they say you silly American, when will you learn your English.

Anyways. I usually love fall. I love to see the colors changing. I love that crisp feeling in the air and being able to pull all of my sweaters out from the back of the closet where they were shoved all summer. I love the sunshine and light in the afternoons. The pumpkins and corn mazes and hay rides. I love seeing the Halloween decorations in the stores and have a total love/hate relationship with the dreaded countdown to Christmas.

Fall in Ireland? It doesn't live up to my expectations. Why should it though? Its a completely different country, in a different latitude on the other side of the Atlantic (the COLD side. hrmph). Here the leaves begin changing as early as late august. And strangely enough it never seems like there is a bursting of color on the trees like there was in America. It just kinda slowly changes and they fall off and thats it. I can't even seem to find huge piles of leaves on the sidewalks like you would back home. (you know the kind you can shuffle your feet through and they make that great rustling/crunching sound) There are no hay rides here. The pumpkins are rare. You can only seem to find them at Tesco and they are tiny and insanely overpriced. (seriously 5 euros for a "large" pumpkin....the pumpkin is about the same size as a box of kleenex!) Its just not the same. I don't think that Ireland has to change, I think my expectations need some work though.

Fall here is more of a teaser for winter weather. Its basically the same as winter, just about 10 degrees warmer. So far it has been grey skies and rain all day long. It makes it hard to get out of bed some mornings, but since this is my second time experiencing winter weather here, I find it much easier to get on with my day this time around.

I do have to say though, I have been sick the past couple of days and today I finally have the chance to stay at home and rest and there is no better weather for laying on the couch all day than cold, rainy weather. Another thing that is good about the grey skies all of the time is how much I appreciate sunshine when we get it. Last week we had a sunny afternoon (not day, we don't really get days that are entirely sunny!) and I couldn't get over how colorful everything was! I really appreciated the beauty of that afternoon of sunshine more than I would have if we got sunshine all the time.

I think this year instead of wishing that fall here was more like in America I am going to try and be creative. Make it something nice for me. Make sure that I celebrate Thanksgiving and do a pumpkin for Halloween. So bring it on Ireland- fall (not autumn) style!