The time of the season..??

Why on earth is Starbucks already selling its pumpkin-flavored items? The sign that went up this week promoting the pumpkin spice latte and the pumpkin cream cheese muffin refers to sampling the "pumpkiny taste of fall." (Is "pumpkiny" even a word, by the way?)
Ummm... fall doesn't actually start until September 22nd. In other words, it's still three weeks away.
It's bad enough that summer clothes are in stores in the dead of winter, while fall clothing shows up around the 4th of July, and Christmas items are for sale in October. Now the fall beverages are being foisted upon us in the summer?? It's so wrong. And even more incongruous in San Francisco, as we are just starting to get our warmest weather...though I know Starbucks can't market to every little microclimate around.

On another note, the hurricane coverage on TV isn't funny anymore. In fact, the Gulf Coast appears to be hell on earth right now. I can't quite fathom what's happening there.