Missing My Favorite Season :0(

Ho hum.  Ho Hum.  I'm feeling kind of glum.  While everyone back home is posting pictures on facebook of their recent trips to the apple orchard, pumpkin patch and homemade recipes for the "best" pumpkin latte - I can say it....I find myself feeling really JEALOUS!  :0/  Fall has always been my favorite season of all.  I love pulling out my Rubbermaid tubs from the basement and rooting through all of our Fall duds.  (Okay.  Wait.  Actually!  That is one of the things I HATE about the change of seasons!!)  Haha!  See!?  I've been away too long.  My memory is getting fuzzy on what is factual and what is fabrication!!  So, lets see here...Fact.  I hate sorting through bins upon bins of clothing for the children to try to determine what still fits and what we need to shop for.  Fact.  I hate when all the Fall/Winter clothes are finally sorted and have been nicely folded & placed into the children's bureau drawers that I have to trudge BACK downstairs to the basement and rifle through the bins AGAIN searching for shorts and t-shirts because the temperature temporarily skyrockets for a couple of days!  Can't have them all dying of heatstroke at school while they boil in their recently unearthed Autumn apparel!  Fact.  I love when I yank the first sweater of Fall down over my head.  Fact.  I love it when my jeans STILL fit from the season before!  Fact.  I hate it when they don't!  (Stop eating Cheez-It's Mother!)  Fact.  I still have hiking boots from a high school boyfriend that fit and I STILL Rock 'em when I go to places like the pumpkin patch and the apple orchard.  They are so comfy and rugged!  I LOVE them!  Anyhoooo!  So!?  What is this Massachusetts, Fall lovin' gal supposed to do now that I am in Bangalore India during Autumn!?  Well!  Glad you asked!!  ;0)

I started by putting up all my Halloween decorations about two weeks ago!  YES, I DID!  I lit my "Harvest" scented Yankee Candle and began with my Autumn embellishing!  I started with my front yard!  I always hang up a cheesy little seasonal garden flag so this was nothing out of the ordinary but then YEARS ago, my friend, Beth and I got a decorating tip from the lovely Martha Stewart for some DIY ghosts to hang on the front of your house and mine have been "spookin' it up" every year since!  So, it should come as no surprise that they made the journey with us to India and are now happily flapping on my front porch!  They are no longer freezing their ghostly booties off but they are thoroughly enjoying the warm Indian breeze that sets them in motion!

The Homestead at Halloween

My Welcome Wreath and Our Little
 "Creepy Guy" hanging out on the door handle

Spooky Spiders also courtesy of Martha®

Peekaboo!  There's a Pumpkin hiding in my Palm!!!

Okay!  Here we go!  We're heading inside now!

My Indoor Pumpkin Patch

The kids helped put the bats in the palm tree and Matt put the leaf garland on the steps.  How fun!  Now we're all feeling a little more festive!

Even transformed the livingroom!  Bats on the windows and all!
 (Thanks again, Martha!)

 The Halloween Countdown is on!

So, now that the inside of my house is all ready to welcome Fall, I thought I'd share a little story about how the great outdoors in India is a little bit different in the Fall than it is in the US.  The other day, I was absentmindedly reading some emails on my cell phone while I was walking to meet up with a couple of friends.  When all of the sudden, about 10 feet in front of me I heard a "whooshing" sound and then a swift THUMP on the ground!  This jolted me out of my electronic oblivion & that's when my mind started to swoon with thoughts of "what could have been."  It's actually a good thing I was just casually strolling along because if I had been just a couple of steps speedier in my stride, I would have gotten cracked on the head with THIS....

Palm Tree Debris!! 
Not exactly like when leaves start to fall off the trees in the US is it?!  Hahaha!

I cannot even begin to tell you the speed at which this "palm tube" came plummeting to the ground.  I don't know if it could actually kill a person but without a doubt - It would inflict some SERIOUS damage!  Then my mind started to wonder and think about how the leaves must be changing colors and falling to the ground back home.  People will soon be raking leaves into piles and there will be a crisp bite to the air."  In Bangalore, I don't know if you can really say that we have "seasons."  Well, certainly not seasons like what you and I would think of them.  In Bangalore we do refer to certain months as "summer" or "monsoon" but generally speaking the weather is always nice in Bangalore and the sun is always shining.  The more I thought about it, I would never say that we have "Autumn" here but I guess I would say we have "fall".  All year round.  Yes, all year round things are "falling" from the trees!  Sometimes it is fruit that is falling from the trees.  At other times of the year, the trees are dropping fragrant flowering buds and recently I found a tree that actually did have leaves that were changing color and falling to the ground...JUST LIKE AT HOME!  (I wonder if the people that live in that house would really wig out if they saw a family of six raking up their leaves and jumping into them?!  HAHAHA!)  Although, here in India you will not find any rakes.  Rather brooms.  Coconut brooms, actually.  Every morning I wake to a zwiff, zwiff, zwiffing sound of the coconut broom being scraped along the grass outside of our home.

                                       

                                                  The Rake           VS.          The Coconut Broom

One HUGE difference between the two is the amount of ground you can cover.  A rake definitely covers more ground and in a short amount of time.  A rake also has a long handle.  When you use a coconut broom you have to stoop over in order to reach the ground and then you use a flicking motion with your wrist to get the ground debris moving.

 Gardener at the kids school "zwiffing" up the leaves ;0)

I know!  It's not gonna draw any "leaf peepers" but this is definitely

as good as it gets and I'll take it!!

Don't know if there are enough leaves to jump into but I bet I could at least walk through them and listen for the "crunching" sound beneath my feet?!

HEY!  That's a pretty good pile she's got there!

It'll take a lot of sweeping to clean up all of these flower blossoms!

Don't know if you can technically call this a "leaf" that has fallen off the tree but this is definitely the sort of stuff that you see on the ground daily that has fallen from the treetops above.

Palm Branch that is getting ready to fall down.

We've got a palm leaf down on Ave 17!!

Erica came home sick from school on this day and even though she felt cruddy I convinced her she "needed" to pose with one of these palm branches!  Thanks, Doll!

Everyday the maintenance department comes to our yard

 with the leaf tractor to collect the piles that have been gathered around the neighborhood by all of the gardeners. 

(EVERYONE employs their own gardener!)

Filling up the leaf tractor

Matt hurrying to catch the

tractor, "WAIT, WAIT!  I have some more!"

Bye-Bye Tractor!  See you tomorrow!

So although my Indian experience in many ways is very different from my life in the US - There are also some similarities....like falling "leaves"  ;0)  I am definitely learning to appreciate the similarities AND the differences while I am here!  So, even though I miss the crisp, cool temperatures of the Fall and the many traditional activities that accompany Autumn, I am also totally okay with my warm sunny days and trips to the swimming pool!  It also helps that we are looking forward to some fun costume parties in the coming days and the kids will get to Trick or Treat the end of the month!! 

Happy Fall from India!  xo