the search begins: lumpy pumpkins

I pulled up to my townhouse yesterday and the most amazing thing was there to welcome me home. This tree had changed color in the length of a school day. How magical! How magnificent! I am late for my acupuncture appointment already but I must stop and take a picture of this tree! If anyone understands the overwhelming need to live in the now and stop and look at beautiful things it's my acupuncturist. Girlfriend and I were cut from the same cloth, I tell you. Anne Shirley would say we are bosom friends and I would have to agree.

So could beat the dead horse (gosh, what a terrible, terrible saying that is) and talk about my affinity for fall again but I will not do that to you. Just know that our toes are cold and our hearts are full and that black bean soup never tasted so good. 

I also stopped to look at the lumpiest, ugliest duckling of a pumpkin outside of the grocery store yesterday. I just wanted it take it home with me because there's something about ugly ducklings that pull at my heartstrings. I know if I went to the pound to adopt a puppy I would leave with one that had a missing eye and no leg.. because if I don't who the heck will?

Well the lumpy pumpkin had no price and I had no coat so I had to run to the car before I caught pneumonia or something tragic.

I attribute this love for lumpy pumpkins and one-eyed puppies to growing up spending all day on a Saturday looking for the most perfect of perfect Christmas trees/pumpkins/puppies. My dad has a wonderful eye for beauty, and if he were here right now he would say something devastatingly romantic about how he used that same eye to pick my mom. But when I was little and we were going up and down the rows of the pumpkin patch, turning over pumpkins, picking them up, having someone hold it while he stood back to get a better look, I couldn't help but see all of the pumpkins that were left behind.

Now those pumpkins had character. 

Look how that pumpkin sits tipped to one side. How sassy!
I'm a sucker for character.

So the hunt begins for a pumpkin with character. Keep ya posted.