10 things that Make October the best month

I can smell it.  The best month of the year has nearly passed, and I can smell the sun on the maple leaves, the bonfires, the cider and donuts, the sharp freshness of cut pumpkin...

Ten things that make this the best month of the year, as agreed upon by everyone I talk to:

1. Minnesota puts on a gorgeous show in October, one that starts far to the north and slides southward day by day as leaf after leaf loses its green and the reds and yellows and deep glossy wine-colors emerge.  Keep your Colorado aspens and Vermont maples.  These are my colors.
2. Apples.  Not the rock hard winter apples shipped in from far away, but sun-warmed sweetness, fresh from this soil.  
3. Trader Joe's is full of pumpkin EVERYTHING.  I know, Trader Joe's is problematic, and I do prefer to shop at the co-op when I can afford it, but pumpkin ice cream, cereal, bagels, ravioli... yum.
4. Good sleeping weather.  
5. Mostly, it's one of the cheapest months of the year, energy-wise.  No A/C, no furnace. Some mornings, I pop the heat on for a few minutes to take the chill out of the air, or turn on the oven for a bit, but otherwise, it's perfect.
6. Have I mentioned the sky?  That picture at the top? Last weekend. A sky so blue, I couldn't breathe.  
7. Usually, here, no snow yet.  *fingers crossed*
8. The Friends in the Forest Halloween Walk.  I've missed this only once in the past 15 years, and that was when my son, then 1 1/2, fell asleep in the car just before I drove there.  If you are local, please, please join us tonight.  
9. Halloween itself.  Our neighborhood swarms with children, we get way too much candy (most of which goes to the Sugar Sprite, some of which is still in my chest freezer from last year), and I love the thinning of the veils.  I can feel the space between the known and the unknown growing so small.
10. October baseball, even if I'm not watching it.  I love baseball, and this is the height of skill and heartfelt play. 

So, there you are.  Ten out of hundreds of reasons why I love this month.  I am clinging to it hard this year, helping to stave off the clutching despair of last winter.  I love the dying light.  Let's all go read Keats and Shelley and stomp around in swirling cloaks, and let's tell some really good ghost stories.

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