Pumpkin Spice Lattes Are Coming Back

We’re pretty sure this means, legally, summer is over.

Our ancestors might have looked to nature to learn that the seasons are changing: the turning leaves, the cooling winds, the arrival of autumn rain. How wonderfully quaint that was. Now, on the bleeding edge of history, we’ve developed a better way, a definitive way, to know that fall is here and summer is dwindling to its last.Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back at Starbucks.The gentle wafting smell of prepackaged warming spices and processed pumpkin flavour will fill our gentle city as soon as August 28, Starbucks’ earliest pumpkin-spiced rollout ever! (Also, how great would it be if we celebrated the season by chasing pumpkins down a hill like they do with cheese in England?) Yes, it’s a bittersweet time, gently spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, that reminds us the days are getting shorter, the inevitable grey is coming, and we continue to creep, unceasingly, towards the grave. But it’s also getting to be sweater weather so there’s that! By October we ought to be hitting peak pumpkin spice. Everyone from indie coffee shops to Seven-Elevens will be spicing their lattes and pastries and doughnuts. A sensible mayoral candidate might even try perfuming their mailouts with pumpkin spice just to get ahead of the curve. But for now, let’s relish the last few days of summer, and get all amped up on some iced green teas with lemonade. Soon Starbucks will officially end summer ‘18 and we will all stride, cardigan-clad and nostrils flared, into the cozy pumpkin-spiced world of autumn.