It’s Pumpkin Time!

How you look at this time of year depends on your age. If you’re very young, you see summer leaving, cooler temperatures arriving, and leaves falling from the sky. Those leaves you can rake up and make huge mounds that you can run down the hill and jump into. You can easily grab handfuls and throw them at your brothers and sisters.

There’s no denying it. This is a wonderful time of year if you’re a kid because you know Halloween is right around the corner, then Thanksgiving, and of course Santa will be coming down the chimney soon after the turkey leaves. So yes, for kids, this is a magical time of the year.

But October is not just magical for kids.

If you’re a grown-up, this time of year brings cooler weather, which means you don’t have to run the air conditioning as much, which means you have more money in your pocket at the end of the month. That extra money can help offset all the Halloween decorations you’re buying for the outside and inside of your house. If you’re like us, you spend that extra money on anything orange, especially if that orange is a pumpkin. So you know what that means? 

This story is about Pumpkin Time.

Down our neighborhood street, front yards are already outfitted with scary 20-foot skeletons, T-Rexes, and every blowup you can imagine. But not our yard. Nope, our yard is vacant except for the grass that, thankfully, is slowly turned brown and going dormant for the next four or five months. 

But when you get to our front porch, you’ll start seeing orange and you don’t have to rub your eyes. In our house, starting the first of October and running all the way through December 31^st, orange is king.

Yes, Dear Reader, everything in our house magically turns to orange as the clock turns to October 1^st. Now, I know a clock doesn’t turn to October 1^st, but everything in our house sure  turns to orange once it clock strikes.   

We have so many orange decorations on every shelf, every wall, and even the floor that I’ve lost count, but it doesn’t stop there. I happen to have a black t-shirt with a huge orange pumpkin on the front with its carved-out shell featuring the silhouette of a T-Rex. I did not buy this shirt. And I did not buy the trick-or-treating T-Rex under a white sheet, but I love them both. 

Who did? Well, The Wife and I have been happily married for 27 years, and I would like to keep it that way so that somebody will not be named. Nevertheless, somebody in our house bought me that wonderful shirt, and that somebody loves pumpkins. 

I can understand the affinity for the heavy, round, orange gourd because I too enjoy a pumpkin or two, especially when it comes in delicious pie form. If there’s anything better than a warm pumpkin pie out of the oven with a big scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on it, then I don’t know what it is. (But I’d be open to trying it.)

My wife is the best at baking pumpkin pies. She adds a little bit of nutmeg, a dash of cinnamon plus a whole bunch of other yummy things. I have no clue what they are, but it doesn’t make any difference. The Wife’s pumpkin pies, dare I say, are even better than the ones my mom made when I was a little boy grown up on Flamingo Street.

I look forward to this time of the year not because Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are right around the corner. Not because I have to move a bunch of heavy pumpkins onto our front porch and inside our house and then find someplace to get rid of them all by December 31^st. Nor is it because of the lower utility bills. Nope. I look forward to this time of the year because it means three months of The Wife’s delicious pumpkin pies in the refrigerator. 

And that vanilla bean ice cream in the freezer.