Falling into Romance? by Hannah Rowan #RomanceGems

The leaves are turning brilliant colors of orange and yellow, the air is crisp, and there’s frost on car windows in the mornings.  Mums decorate gardens and pumpkins proliferate everywhere. Pumpkin flavor is all the rage, though honestly the thought of pumpkin ice cream or pumpkin-flavored coffee strikes me as rather gross. Spooky decorations abound.

Fall is the time of year when I have clothes strewn all over the house while I’m in the process of washing and storing all my summer clothes, digging out the sweaters, and trying to decide how to dress in the changing weather.

Fall once had its good points. As a child I’d be excited about the start of school. (Yes, I was that kind of kid!) I enjoyed raking leaves into a big pile and setting it on fire, which was legal at the time. And of course there was Halloween when I trudged from door to door filling my pillowcase with yummy treats.

But now…fall means it’s about to get cold!  It means I have to set aside my sandals and squeeze my feet into confining shoes. It means no more Jersey tomatoes or sweet corn from the farm stand.

For me, fall is redeemed by one thing—my wedding anniversary starts off the season. It’s become our tradition to take some sort of special trip in honor of the occasion, and I do love to travel. As the years go on our celebrations have evolved from something along the lines of an overnight trip to the Poconos complete with the heart-shaped whirlpool tub to a week in Europe.

Under normal circumstances this year, our 45^th, would have involved some sort of extra special destination.

What we ended up with was two nights in upstate New York in a resort called Mohonk Mountain House, which honors the spooky part of fall by resembling a haunted Stephen King-like castle. With some trepidation, we ate our meals inside a public place for the first time in over six months.

I swam in the indoor pool and he worked out in the gym, the only guests using them. What a treat after missing my daily swim all these months!

And we walked and walked. Up very high hills where we could look out over the landscape and gaze at the colorful leaves. Through gardens and greenhouses festooned with pumpkins of all sizes. We were lucky to have sunshine and fairly warm weather.

So if my fellow Gems are celebrating Fall into Romance this month, I suppose you could say I qualify, and maybe fall isn’t so bad after all.

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