"It's so beautiful out here," Penny sighed. "I just love this area.”
"Ernest's farm is where I bought the hay bales and pumpkins that are in the PharmaTech lobby," Penny continued as we pulled onto a gravel drive flanked by two big signs depicting a large man holding up a giant pumpkin. For a weekday morning, there was a surprising number of people on the farm. The crowd included several school groups.
"Garrett!" several of my little brothers shouted.
Penny waved and hurried over to them, hugging each one and greeting them by name.
"Are you excited for the party next weekend?" she asked, a huge smile on her face.
"Yes! All our friends are coming!" Billy said, gesturing to the group of schoolkids gawking at the fields.
"Garrett's here helping me pick out pumpkins. Would you like to help?"
I love my brothers, but I came out here to a farm to look for pumpkins because I wanted to spend time with Penny, not babysit. But Penny waved them to troop around us to pick pumpkins.
"If you need pumpkins, we've got lots of pumpkins," Ernest said, approaching us with his hands in his overalls. The farmer was a large man. His overalls were embroidered with a scarecrow, and he wore a trucker hat.
"Amazing!" Penny said as Ernest led us to the pumpkin patch. "Okay, so I need fifty white ones, eighty orange ones, and ten of those gigantic pumpkins."
"Those are a little more expensive," Ernest said.
"Garrett brought his credit card." She smiled at me.
"I also have some blue pumpkins," Ernest said, leading us through the fields. "They're an heirloom breed, originally developed in this area."
"These look gray," I said. "Or am I color-blind?"
"They have a slight bluish tint," Penny said.
"They're not that cheerful," I told her, frowning.
Penny dramatically clapped her hands over one of the pumpkins. "Shh. You'll hurt their feelings!"
"Do you have black pumpkins?" I asked.
"We have some dark-green squash," Ernest offered.
I followed Penny around as she inspected every single pumpkin. The kids trailed behind us, pulling carts full of the ones we chose.
"Just buy a bunch, and we'll sort them out later," I told her.
"We're taking pictures of these, Garrett," Penny sniffed. "Sebastian is going to be at the house. We have to make sure we don't have a bunch of rabbit-chewed pumpkins out on display. Plus I need to have the right variety of pumpkins. Big ones, medium ones, small ones, giant ones."
"We had a good rain and a long summer, so we do have some real giant ones," Ernest said, leading us through another row of pumpkins.
"Wow, these are huge!" Penny said when we stopped in front of the biggest pumpkins I'd ever seen.
Penny took pictures of each large pumpkin.
"What are you doing?"
She glanced at me. "Hazel has opinions on which pumpkins I buy."
"That one looks like it's melting," Otis said. "You should buy that."
"I also have some square ones. Tried this technique I learned about where you grow them in a glass bottle," Ernest said proudly.
"I don't think we want any square pumpkins," Penny said.
