At the Pumpkin Patch
Out in the Field
The weather was perfect for a trip to the pumpkin patch, sunny and crisp and bathed in a golden October sunshine that illuminated the copper leaves.
No matter your age, a trip to the pumpkin patch is always a delightful experience.
Life feels simple and joyful in the midst of such cheerful abundance, and the pumpkins never fail to provide interesting details.
Nature's creativity and variety knows no bounds, fact made evident in their large, small, round, flat, warty, smooth, gourd-shaped, and bottle-necked wonders.
This year the bountiful harvest spoiled me with a rainbow of colors, from Halloween orange pumpkins to glow-in-the-dark ghostly whites, gloomy Black Kat varieties, and lovely princess pink Porcelain Dolls.
I was like a kid in a candy store, unable to resist any of them.
Just a bit of trivia: this year, Travis Gienger from Minnesota broke the world record for the largest pumpkin.
The monster gourd, which he grew in his backyard, weighed in at 2749 pounds, surpassing the old world record by 47.
Fall Bounty
Harvest season is the most rewarding yet busiest time of the year for those who live off the land.
There is still work to be done to prepare the soil before sowing winter crops like hard red wheat, onion, garlic, beets, turnips, snow peas, and winter radishes.
The fall harvest blesses the proud grower with an abundance of grains and legumes, fruits and vegetables, roots and tubers, all awaiting to be processed and stored for winter.
Grapes have to be crushed and fermented into wine; onions braided in long ropes to store over winter, summer vegetables with high water content canned or dried.
The land itself yields its own set of chores: it must be cleared and tilled to get ready for spring planting.
The tools and equipment need to be cleaned, repaired, and put away.
Those festive holiday pumpkins, jars of home-made preserves and bales of hay - lots and lots of work.
And Jack O' Lanterns
The story of Jack O'Lanterns is far creepier than their glowing, happy faces would indicate.
They get their name from the lights that flicker over marshes, said to tempt foolish travelers to their demise, or the legend of Stingy Jack, condemned to wander with only a lantern made of a hollow root to light his path after bargaining with the devil.