What do apple farmers think of picking apples for fun?
These Sunday reads look at the shifting fall season, how Starbucks perfected the pumpkin spice latte, and more.
 

Stephanie Bai

Associate editor

The pumpkin patch was a sweaty place to visit this year. My friends and I made our annual trip to Maryland to buy apple-cider donuts, admire the changing leaves, and get lost in a stunningly complicated corn maze—but we hadn’t accounted for the sun beating down on us, peaking near 80 degrees in early October.

As I swatted the yellowjackets away from my food, I longed for the October I had experienced just two years ago, on a trip to the same farm: the cool, misty weather; the prevalence of knitwear; the diminished threat of sunburn. Finally, weeks later, the autumn I love is creeping back. Here are some stories I’ve compiled for the sweater-wearing, Halloween-observing, pumpkin-spice-drinking readers.

A Fall Reading List

(Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism / Flickr)

 

“It must be an East Coast or urban thing.”

(Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Shutterstock.)

 

The pumpkin spice latte has defined fall for 20 years.

(Millennium Images / GalleryStock)

 

Yearly weather patterns are changing. Our traditions need to keep up.

(Sepia Times/Universal Images Group/Getty)

 

“A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this, the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year.”