I can barely believe it’s October already, it was July five minutes ago. Where, oh where, does the time go? So, now that the day’s banalities are over let’s get on with the Monday Listicle. Today’s topic: top ten autumn must haves… I love autumn… not the crappy rainy autumn that it looks like we’re having, but the lovely, colorful autumn, the sweet cinnamon and pumpkin smelling autumn, the warm sweater and comfortable jean wearing autumn the catalogues show us.

No seriously, I mostly love autumn, I love the colors, the smells, the chill in the air, and the sense of wonderful new beginnings and possibilities that the start of a new school year always brings, even now that I’m all grown up. Despite the fact that I spend a fair amount of my time bitching and moaning about the weather, I actually love living in a place that has four distinct seasons.

But still, autumn has its peculiarities… for lack of a better word… so here are ten must haves for autumn in northern Italy.

1. apples – many, many bushels of apples. So you can make lovely apple pies, and apple butters and baked apples…

2. chestnuts – falling off the trees, ready to be cleaned and roasted (or boiled, or baked)

3. a fireplace – to warm up the house until it gets cold enough to turn on the heating (and to roast the abovementioned chestnuts)

4. rain boots and an umbrella near the door – because it’ll rain, but it’s not all bad, you need rain so you can go pick mushrooms.

5. mushrooms – to make risotto with, and to cover veal scaloppini, and to batter and deep fry if your liver can take it.

6. working heating – because at some point that fireplace isn’t going to cut it anymore.

7. cozy blankets – to wrap yourself up in on the couch, in front of the fire, as you sip hot chocolate and eat apple pie

8. coffee and cake – to enjoy with your friends cause the kids are finally back in school and you have the time to actually sit and gossip, uninterrupted, for a few short hours a week.

9. baskets – for all the apple picking, mushroom hunting, fire wood gathering, you will inevitably be doing.

10. a beach house – where you can run off to once you realize that picking, peeling, coring, and cooking apples for all the wonderful cakes and pies you’re making is a gigantic pain in the ass, that there’s only so many chestnuts and mushrooms you can eat before your stomach rebels, that, though romantic, that fireplace is a bitch to clean and you use up a box of matches every time you light the fire, and that the flippin’ rain isn’t going to stop till it turns into snow in November.

At that point, and it will come sooner rather than later, you get a few friends, you leave your kids with your husbands at home, and you take off for the beach, wind in your hair, sun in your face, and the blessed sound of girlish laughter and rolling waves in your ears.

Four happy girlies taking advantage of happy hour… the sad face in the back left corner is very pregnant and drinking a shirley temple…

psyching ourselves up to get into the freezing cold water, along with the surfer boys you can barely see to the right, in their full body wetsuits… wimps!

Autumn at the beach! (Surprisingly, our teeth aren’t chattering and our lips aren’t blue, but we had just been rolled around in the surf by a larger than expected wave.)