Pumpkin Patch

My Mom and I drove Upcountry today to Kula Country Farms to take Dean to a Pumpkin Patch. I wish I would have known about it a week ago - BEFORE we spent $20 on a pumpkin at Safeway (that will probably rot in less than 3 days)!!! Of course, I also paid $4.99/lb for lettuce and $9.98 for a gallon of milk, so I can't say I was really surprised. It's gotten pathetic. I do buy organic produce, but still - that's just crazy. In better news, gas on Maui has officially dropped below $4.00/gallon!!!! That was pretty exciting! And I heard that Lanai is now under $5.00/gallon! Lanai, part of Maui County, is the reason that Maui County has had the highest gas prices in the country for over the past year. I heard that just a few months ago they were paying as high as $5.68/gallon!!! (So all you Okies can stop complaining about your "high" gas prices!). Anyway, my point is that it might be worth the exorbitant cost of gas to drive Upcountry to Kula Country Farms again to buy produce on a more regular basis. Their little produce stand was VERY reasonably priced ($1.99 for a head of lettuce, $5.00 for a clamshell of strawberries, $3.00 for raspberries, $0.89/lb for bananas, etc etc etc) and of course I always try to buy locally grown organic produce anyway.

But their little fall-ish pumpkin patch was super cute! They had REAL pumpkins & gourds on REAL vines!! You could walk out in the vines and pick out your pumpkins. Of course, once Dean found an ear of decorative corn (or "kohn" as he calls it) he didn't give a crap about the pumpkins. (he did at least figure out pretty quickly that he couldn't eat the corn). He hasn't put down that ear of corn since he found it!! Such a weird kid. He carried it around the house ALL afternoon. He tried feeding it to George (his stuffed giraffe) and Nani (the cat) multiple times. He had to tell Uncle Chewy all about it (our neighbor behind us who Dean has taken quite a liking to, which is funny - Chewy is a big burly Samoan, but very warm and friendly and Dean immediately loved him) - Dean's one-sided conversation with Chewy tonight lasted about 10 minutes and involved a lot of animated pointing, laughing, some jumping, and a TON of indecipherable jibber-jabber with a few recognizable words (goat, corn, pumpkin, cat, house) thrown in. Dean did have fun this afternoon feeding one of the goats part of a pumpkin that the goat had already started digging into, then thought he'd have a taste himself (he wasn't impressed). But most of all it was just nice to pretend like it was fall!! The air was brisk, it was nice and overcast....if it wouldn't have been for the breathtaking bi-coastal ocean view, I could almost pretend it was late October in Oklahoma!

Here are some pics...
Notice the scarecrow is waving a shaka!









When Dean saw the little green & yellow gourd he's holding in this next pic, he said "duck", which I thought was pretty clever - because if you use your imagination, it DOES look kind of like a duck!