These are pumpkins in their natural habitat. Who knew it wasn't cardboard boxes, right? For my mother-in-law's b-day, we ventured back in time in more ways than one. Not only did we visit a farm that still uses an early 19th century cash register and scale, we visited the pumpkin farm that my husband's family has been visiting since they were kids.
Do you know how much pumpkins cost when you don't have to have them shipped all over the country? We bought 6 pumpkins, all of varying sizes from large to small, for $22. You go out into the patch and pick your own. Tons of people were there with their kids. It was very cute.
And since it was real actual nature there were bugs there:
There were fun pumpkin anomalies
I was doing good, trying to be all "nature is awesome" as you can see by this photo:
And then I realized there were bees everywhere. Bees! I hate bees. I had never been stung by a bee my whole life until I was 30, when a baby bee (or a really small bee) stung me in the neck! I went to the Long Beach farmer's market and as I got into the car to go home I felt something prickly on my necklace. I pulled off a bee from my neck and the stinger was still in there. I had always had a healthy fear of them, since I wasn't too sure whether or not I would have an allergic reaction. Given how every single insect bite has given me hives or welts, I should probably have figured it wouldn't go well.
Most people get a red sore spot for a few days. I had a red neck (har har) for about 3 days, then it calmed down. Apparently, teaching got it angry, because in my Wednesday afternoon class, I started to feel hot and itchy and noticed that my students eyes were getting wide and they weren't looking at my face so much as my neck. Just before I let them go, I asked "Is there something going on in this area here?" and pointed to my neck. A lot of nodding heads and scared looks. Crap. I revealed my bee sting tragedy to them and asked if it was normal or if I was going to die. These kids have Google, they know shit I don't know. One gal has the kind of bee sting allergy where your throat closes up and you can actually die, and she told me that what I had was very very bad, but not a true allergic reaction, which would have happened days before.
So I went to my lovely HMO pharmacy, hoping to get some kind of relief. The pharmacist told me that the next time I get stung, it might be worse, and that probably after that I'd always have to carry an epi-pen that I could use to stop the reaction at the moment I realize I've been stung. Fun!
This long winded story should give you the context for why, at the beautiful pumpkin patch, while we were supposed to be basking in the glow of nostalgia, sun, and autumnal splendor, I was freaking the eff OUT. Partly because of the pain and fear of the unknown allergic reaction, but also because I have no health insurance. Bees were my mortal enemy and I needed to be free of them. As we were about to weigh our pumpkins, I noticed they were crowding around the people in line and the tons of pumpkins clustered together. I quickly made my escape. I was trying hard to be nice and not ruin it, but damn, I needed to get into the car fast.
These were our final selections:
Did you know that prior to sending pumpkins to market, they have to clean off the prickly barbs that are on the stems? That means that when you go to pick up a pumpkin in a patch, you should go for the base not the prickly stem. I did not know this! I have picked up every pumpkin in my whole life (whether from a box at the supermarket or a hay bale in a faux patch) by the stem. That's a freebie kids. You don't need to thank me.
So me and nature tried to make a go of it. I put my best foot forward, I enjoyed parts of it and even swooned over the pastoral landscape of North Hampton a bit. But in the end, I think we're just too different. I'm a city mouse, I guess. There's a silver lining in all this, though. At least I've found a great partner who feels the exact same way. As evidenced by the photo below, M could really just not do this nature crap.
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