After almost two weeks of vacation in coastal North Carolina, I was in no mood for what I'd heard was going on back here in the frigid north: Cold, rain, cold and cold. While I'd been bragging about the weather on Facebook, my homebound friends had likely been cursing my name as they rubbed their hands together – as much for warmth as in gleeful anticipation of me shutting up about the weather once I returned to Cleveland.

It was indeed colder at home, but then again, this ain't the beach. So in order to stave off the post-vacation blahs, we made a list of Things We Love About Fall In Ohio, which included things like big red wines, roasted chicken and potato dinners, homemade stew and apple picking. Last weekend, we were treated to a beautifully crisp fall afternoon, and we put it to good use at Patterson's Fruit Farm in Chesterland.

Patterson's pick-your-own facility on Mulberry Road was only marginally less mobbed than the Caves Road location. We encountered rows and rows of trees picked clean of Ida Red, Jonathan and Golden Delicious apples, which had presumably already gone home with hordes of hungry pickers who got up earlier than me on that sunny Sunday. Still, we found plenty of apples, and it was a purely Ohio-grown pleasure to pick them under a bright blue sky, surrounded by trees on fire with autumn color.

We paid for our apples (12 pounds!) and supplemented the haul with apple cider and a fritter almost planetary in size. Yes, it's hard to say goodbye for the summer, but it's delicious to greet another golden Ohio fall.