punkin patch pictures

heather and i met barb, gab and joy at richmond country farms on saturday morning. we got there first and we took some time, not only to look over the market, but i also used the opportunity to brush my teeth (elicia and i were dead out of tooth paste and heather brought some for me out of the kindness of her heart). so after a short lookiloo, where i eyed a pomegranite, and heather searched in vain for homemade pastries, and we both oohed and aahed over the pretty hens, roosters and chicks wandering around at will, we decided to walk down to the pumpkin patch parking to look for our group. we stood there in the parking lot talking and waiting, watching all the families enter the patch. we waited in vain for our friends it seemed. heather said maybe they'd call my cell, which i just happened to leave in the trunk of my car. so we walked back to the market and sure enough i had missed a call. i called back and it was joy who answered. they must have just arrived right when we left, so we drove over, parked beside a green vw bug and joyfully made our way to the patch. first we looked at the goats and ponies and llammas. then we paid the eight dollars to get in. i wanted more than one pumpkin and as if the lady knew my thoughts she told me it was two dollars for an extra pumpkin, so i happily paid the extra.

we walked down a hay strewn path over a little brindged pond and noticed the band playing with polly pumpkin and somebody corn dancing in front. "her name's polly pumpkin" said gab as if nothing could please her more.

we were the first ones on our hayride wagon. our guy played the guitar and sang you are my sunshine, twice. we all sang along of course.


our wagon was pulled by a dude driving a tractor, and nursing a hot beverage.



heather, gab, joy and barb--girls 'owning' the hayride.




barb and i do a self-portrait. my head is apparently gargantuan and barb seems to suffer from shrunken head syndrome. when i get over my big head i like this picture. (at least it's not a quarter-sitting-on-a-ham phenomenon.)




this lady is the pumpkin fairy and she greeted us when we arrived at the actual fields of pumpkins. yes. the patch. she was a very informative fairy, and you can easily pick her out in a crowd.




barb had wanted to do a corn maze and a pumpkin patch but we all vetoed this, so i think the pumpkin fairy might have had a hand in making barb's dreams come true, because to our great surprise, there was a corn maze (with cow corn, pumpkin fairy was quick to teach us, warning of "tummy aches" from eating cown corn). so we did the corn maze first.




at the first fork in the path, barb, heather and i chose left and gabby and joy chose the right (goodie goods). we wandered around the muddy paths, found a few dead ends,






lost ourselves in the cowcornforrests, and eventually made our way out of the entrance. oh well.

then the search for the perfect pumpkins began. the first field looked pretty picked over so we went to the field beyond that. that field turned out to be the rotten pumpkin field. barb was getting grossed out and declared an intention to buy a clean perfect whole one from the store. heather wouldn't allow it. we went back to the first field and low and behold we came across a whole whack of all these possibility pumpkins. i found one with character and another one that was long and tall (two things meaning the same thing added together to equal a verbose phrase). we took lots of pictures and were generally all happy with our pumpkins. even barbarelli.



heather's muddy straw clod feet remind me of a horse's. she even paws the ground like a filly. heather wore orange just for the pumpkin patch adventure. every time i looked at it, it reminded me of karey and the time we went shopping at old navy in the states, before it was in canada and she got that shirt. ...i think.



barb smiles beneginly over her perfect orange orb of a squash family origin.



gabrielle with two of her four pumpkins and her muddy pants. she says she's going to come every year!



we were going to wait for the wagon that had the accordian player in it (joy had spotted that one, and accordian accompanied hayride was appealing to us,) but before the accordian one came back, one came that had a banjo and a fiddle and we were appeased. i liked these guys. we sang oh susanna, and old macdonald had a farm and they did a jig or a real or whatever they do, and we clapped along and yelled "yeeehaw!" at appropriate moments. the fiddle player said we were the best group yet. it was because of us. there was this really cute little boy who knew all the words to oh susanna and he kept looking at me with big round eyes. so did his little sister.

they hay ride wagon let us off in front of a big box of fresh apples. we were allowed only one, but i coulda eaten a lot more.



they even sold mini doughnuts there! and you could buy a legendary burger, a cheeseburger or a veggie burger from three white spot guys in the chef get up and with a bbq. heather bought mini doughnuts for four dollars and shared them with me. i was pretty hungry after all that fresh sharp autumn air and they tasted like the best doughnuts ever.

then we played in the hay.



gab climbed a tree to take that shot. of course she did. then we listened to the band play the monster mash and then we left. all our pumpkins were on the larger size and carrying them in plastic bags to the cars seemed to take forever and seemed to leave no blood in our fingers, but we made it.

heather and i did a little shopping at the market, before leaving. heather still couldn't find any pastries and i went ahead bought two pomegranites because i love them so.

elicia was sleeping when i got home. it was such a beautiful fall day on saturday. a perfect day.

at four we went for a walk. elicia discovered this park down by the river on the map, so we went to discover it. well i was already feeling euphoric and the discovery of this park so near our home made me so happy. it was so quiet and hidden and peaceful and pretty. it had sandy beaches and wood boardwalkks and it was just lovely. we met some ladies and their dogs. and we saw a topless man in the bushes. when we first saw him he was talking to one of the dog ladies, so i figured he was alright. we were curious so we went a little further and that's when i saw his socks and shoes neatly piled on a log. was he going for a swim? i don't know. i loved the park so much, i didn't want to come to the end of it. on the way back we found some stairs through a mapple forrest leading up to south marine. the sun was low and filtering through the trees and leaves in such a way that squeezed my heart. on the way back we stopped at safeway for a few things and then walked home. we had been gone for two hours.

heather arrived on the heals of our arrival. she brought her pumpkin but no dvd player. she had some angst with the pizza hut girl, but after that was pleasant enough. we were going to watch zelery, but then heather saw that it was rated r. and so was merchang of venice. those were the two steve movies that she wanted to see, but in the end we watched cry the beloved country. elicia wanted to see that one anyways because i got her to read the book. heather and i ended up scraping out our pumpkins but not carving them. i was going to watch zelery when heather left. but i didn't. i went to bed.

sunday after church i was feeling a little foul, so i ate an apple and slept for three hours. too long. then i watched winged migration and carved my pumpkin. i did the perfect (in MY eyes) face for his shape. i love him.

on monday elicia and i ate at casa d' amigo around the corner from us. we both had the special--mole enchilada. it was good but we both wished that we got more of the delicious cranberry salsa. then i scraped out her pumpkin for her while we watched a movie. again it was supposed to be zelery, but we didn't have the remote and without the remote we couldn't turn on the subtitles. hmph. so we wtached merchant of venice. so good. elicia carved her pumpkin and put him beside mine on our balcony.

on tuesday i went home with lisa and she had me carve two allready gutted pumpkins. i did some of my finest work, i must say on her little pumpkin. all together i carved six pumpkins this season and gutted five. (i gutted one at work, but made kaz carve it because he never had carved a jack oh lantern before). this year has been my persoanl year of the pumpkin. anyways at lisa's i carved and watched oprah. denzel was on. i like him. lisa's whole car port and area was ultra decked out. she had two undred and seventy bags of halloween candy made up. we took turns answering the door and sometimes had each other's back as we liked to say. lisa's son matt sometimes answered the door too, but he's six foot four and he did scare two little girls who just stared up at him. the little little kids were the cutest. the most annoying was the kid who didn't have a constume on and asked me for another bag of candy. my answer was no. lisa and i kept our eyes out for single dads but it was hard to tell. we had wheathouse pizza.

tooday was the longest on your feet all day day. i made shortbread melties. those are shortbreat balls with skor bits in them. very good. elicia was kind and made us both fajitas with homemade tortillas. archie is curled up in front of me, encircled about by my typing arms with his back resting on the computer. and now the third and fourth fingers of my left hand are totally asleep and i must desist in typing any longer, only in favour of saving said fingers from amputation or the like.