Boo Scary Boo

Aria went to the pumpkin patch yesterday. She selected what has to have been the smallest gourd to be found on Sauvie Island. What's more, she doesn't want a bigger pumpkin. She likes them compact and tidy. Perfectly round and symmetrical. And, she doesn't like to carve them. Instead she drew two faces on either side of the pumpkin. Comedy and Tragedy meet Halloween.

But we are not yet done pumpkin patching. Oh, no. We will go out again next week to enjoy one of our few consistent holiday traditions of any kind: The Haunted Trail at Wenzel Farms. Though there is a somewhat less-than-stellar pumpkin patch at the end of said trail, we've discovered that's not really the point.

A few pumpkins are scattered on the ground (which I am willing to bet are imported for the purpose) and you're free to help yourself if you want to carry one back past screaming animatronics and through the pirate ship labyrinth. Instead the fun comes from tromping through the woods past an array of little stone buildings draped in cobwebs and lights, through narrow child sized tunnels dark and close, accompanied by Edgar Allen Poe being blasted over the speakers cunningly disguised behind faces carved into the tree trunks.

One chooses to overlook the fact that this same trail is clearly used at Christmas as well, and sometimes the efforts to disguise the friendly Yule elf-folk as menacing Halloween goblins is not as complete as one might hope, and that the haunted castle which greets you upon arrival is much more impressive on the outside, since once you get in, it basically amounts to a wide 360 degree spin to look at glow-in-the-dark masks attached to the walls.

We overlook this because it's fun to. It's nice to have a tradition, it's enjoyable to wander through this cutesy-quaint little slice of scariness. And even if Bambi doesn't make a convincing zombie deer, I find it hilarious that the attempt has been made.

Plus, at the end, you get candy.