Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Meditations from a Sincere Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday, I did my first-ever stint of selling pumpkins at our church's pumpkin patch.  I chose a shift where I wasn't likely to have too many customers; I wanted a slower time for my first time selling.  It was a beautiful day to sit outside before a stretch of seasonal gourds.




I sold exactly one.  The guy who bought the large pumpkin said, "I'm gonna put a spigot in it and serve drinks that way."  I wondered if he realized that the pumpkin didn't come as a hollow gourd, but I decided not to interfere.



We had other visitors.  I got a variety of shots of this flock of birds, but I never quite got what I wanted to capture:   the quality of white birds, green lawn, and orange pumpkins.



I enjoyed watching the squirrels play hide-and-go-seek in the pumpkin patch.



They played a different game too:




Two women came at separate times and asked how much it cost to take pictures.  I didn't have the presence of mind to suggest a donation--I'm not sure I would have done that anyway.  I gave one little girl stickers, and she acted like she had won the lottery.



I had plenty of time to take pictures in between bouts of reading.  I finished reading Mama Day by Gloria Naylor.  I liked it as much with this reading as I did decades ago.  I read Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They mention this tendency that most of us have when making decisions about our futures: most of us agonize after the decision is made. They advocate learning how to make a decision and move on. We can’t know that we’ve made the best choice because we can’t know how all the consequences will play out.  It's the kind of book that didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, but it was good to be reminded.






I also had time to sketch.  As I thought about our pastor's observation that no other activity brings us into so much contact with our surrounding community, I made this sketch, and late in the process, the words "Pentecostal Pumpkins" came into my head.




Even if I didn't make many sales, it was a peaceful, meditative way to spend part of a day. 

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