'Tis the season to be Fall-y

It is that time of year again!

The Great Glass Pumpkin Patch in Palo Alto! It is an eagerly anticipated day for a group of my dear friends. I don't get to see them often due to distance and time constraints (man, everyone had kids!) which makes the annual event even more special. I hadn't gone since I was pregnant with Luke (yikes!) so I had forgotten just how gorgeous, expensive and dangerous it is.

I think what I love most about it is all the artistry that goes into each individual pumpkin. All the pumpkins are hand-blown by local artists and no two pumpkins are alike. This does create a multitude of problems, which shall be discussed a little later.

There are steps to visiting the pumpkin patch, which most of the attendees seem to know.

Step 1: Arrive obscenely early and be first in line, primed with bubble wrap laden basket in tow.
(I arrive just before it opens because I'm driving up from South SJ - not a quick little trip)

Step 2: Wish that you could bum rush everyone when the open, but realize that you are standing in a field of one-of-a-kind expensive breakables, so pretend that you're friendly, but know that you're really not. Not on the inside, where it counts. Everyone's out for the good ones.


Step 3: Grab what you love with only minor interest in the cost. You can sort the cost out later, but if the one you love is gone, it doesn't matter what the price was. You don't have it.

Step 4: Set up a home base with your initial finds. Leave delicate breakables and set out again for another lap. Be sure to know what your friends are on the hunt for too - you look for them just as much as you look for you. And they look for you too, that's why they're your friends.



Step 5: Spread out all pumpkins. Note that you gravitate towards the same color/size/pattern pumpkins year after year.

**Please note the volume of green pumpkins.

Step 6: Debate the qualities of pumpkin. Qualities include: color, size, price, pattern, inconsistencies, stem, iridescence, transparency, squash-qualities and price. Price price price. Ugh.

Step 7: Include friends in on debate. They will remind you of your current collection, including what you bought the previous year. Will ask profound questions like, "Do you really need to start a new color family?" and the like. You will take pictures with pumpkins that are clearly out of your price range.

note: $165. Yikes! But so pretty . . .
I took a picture with a faboo pumpkin that was $250 - I was about to grab it when someone else swooped in. My friend asked how much it was (for me), the swiper replied "$250" and my friend declared it was "out of her price range." True that.

**It's the Great Christmas Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!**

Step 8: Fend off poachers who make their way around everyone's home bases hoping that the pumpkin they weren't fast enough for will get put back. (They will be taught a lesson about timeliness. Or that they should at least have a timely friend in line for them.)

"It's the Great Christmas Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" or "A Very Dr. Seuss-y Christmas?" Difficult decisions.

Step 9: Send representative out to put back ousted pumpkins. They will bring back other pumpkins you will fall in love with and then be frustrated, just as you were getting to a good place with your decisions.

Step 10: You will head out yourself, just in case. You will pick up one pumpkin, put it down and pick it up again and repeat a number of times. You will barter with your friends about the pumpkins they have that you want and the ones you have that they want.

The pumpkins in question. I was in a "glow-in-the-dark" pumpkin kind of place. Most of the pumpkins I grabbed looked like they could even though they didn't.

Step 11: You will finally make all your decisions, trying to rationalize your choices by saying important things like, "It's an investment" and "I'm supporting local artists" or "It's not as much as a trip to Costco/Target" etc.

The final three, from top to bottom:
*ocean-y, swirl-y, blue one
* tan and blue mottled
* very Tim Burton pumpkin-esque.

(Discovered I enjoyed a matte stem. Made a note of that for next year)

Step 12: You will stand in an obscenely long line to pay.

Step 13: You will watch 18 year olds take your one-of-a-kind artistic creation off to be carefully wrapped. Most of the time it's okay. I've (unfortunately) seen a time it was not. Easily the most stressful part of the day.

You thought there was nothing to this Glass Pumpkin Patch, didn't you? Well, you were wrong. The patch is not for the faint of heart. I'm stressed the whole time that I'm going to belly-flop on a whole section of them like Chris Farley.

But then you get them home and you unwrap them and put them with the pretty ones you already have and you know that fall is finally here.