hunting for exotic pumpkins

After a long weekend in Chicago, Pat and I thought what better way to unwind than looking for pumpkins. I know we have a whole bunch of pumpkins in the front yard, so you might wonder are we nuts or what? I prefer to think it’s the “or what.” We didn’t go hunting for your ordinary run of the mill pumpkin. We went looking for exotics. We found the golden fleece of pumpkins (I know the metaphor's kind of lame, but it’s the best I could think of). Just south of Peninsula, Ohio, is Szalay’s sweet corn farm. It’s in the middle of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, right next to the canal tow path. There are dozens of farm stands between our house and this place, but this is the place to go. Szalay’s is a farm stand extraordinaire. We went for pumpkins, but there were plenty of vegetables, local honey, breads, fruit, and best of all, hot apple cider.

When you pull into the parking lot two giant spiders greet you in front of the corn maze. There were little kids deciding whether to laugh or cry about the giant spiders. I will leave the corn maze to brave souls because of all the "children of the corn" movies. Back to the pumpkins and gourds: my eyes were bigger than my wallet. I wanted a couple of everything.

I'm thinking that if we leave all these winter over in the flower beds, we might, just might, be able to grow our own next summer.