a fruit in season

It is a little funny, America's annual affair with pumpkin. That chunky orange sphere is one of the few foods that actually holds up really well over time, and that tastes perfectly fine after being preserved. You can make an equally delicious pumpkin cake in March as in October. But somehow we've got it into our heads that we must make all of our pumpkin rolls and lattes and pies in the autumn, or bust.

(Now asparagus? Blueberries, tomatoes? Those seasonal obsessions I understand. They are truly wretched out of season.)

Perhaps the autumn pumpkin fling is a way for us to pretend that we're still close to nature, that we care about the seasons God created, when really, we have separated ourselves as much as possible. Ironically, I think the people who are most into pumpkin lattes tend to live furthest away from the natural way of things: the big city hipsters who have probably never seen a cornfield or petted a pig.

Not that I dislike big cities. I also like my air conditioning, which allows me to escape seasonal heat, and my car, which allows me to drive south to the beach when it's freezing at home. But I sometimes think that living seasonally is good for us. It reminds us that we can't have everything we want, when we want it. That the world moves in a rhythm larger than our own whims.

I wish I could find a luscious peach in darkest February, though. Though I could find a peach, "luscious" would not describe it.