Alana Smith
You know what I love? Fancy pumpkins. But you know what I also love? Having enough money to keep the lights on at my house. So why on God’s green earth did it just cost me $147 to beautify my porch for fall? And, that was just the pumpkins! That didn’t count any corn stalks or scarecrows or hay or mums or blow-up spiders.
You know that you can’t just buy one orange pumpkin for $4.99 like you could in 2008. Oh no. We need stacks of pumpkins. And pumpkins leaning on pumpkins. And pumpkins rolling down your steps like your front door just coughed them up. And bumpy pumpkins, green pumpkins, and both tiny and ginormous ones. Some of those pumpkins are so big that you couldn’t even roll them to the car — you’d literally pee your pants just lifting that bad boy into your trunk. You for sure wouldn’t carve it, because it would take until Thanksgiving to get all of the seeds out. Holy moly. Forget Charlie Brown — these pumpkins are straight up bibbidi-boppidi-boo carriage material. Look out Cinderella, I’m coming for you.
On my porch there are white round pumpkins and white flat pumpkins, and pretty pumpkins named Fairytale which are apparently the most fancy pumpkins of all, coming in at $18.99. One of my small pumpkin stacks could have bought me a brand new bra. But oh no—I’ll go wearing my one bra and that fancy pumpkin stack will sit there until it melts into goo one day before Halloween.
It’s a real wise investment, I tell you. I’m definitely in the wrong profession if a pack of pumpkin seeds is five dollars and it will grow a whole patch of pumpkins that cost twenty dollars a pop. I don’t know what that math is, but you’ll probably make a million dollars being a pumpkin farmer in Alabama.
Nevertheless, I love fall and I love a fancy pumpkin, so the cost is what it is. There’s no eating out this week, kids, just take your PB&J outside and admire the pumpkins! Happy fall and I hope y’all can get both pumpkins and gas in your car this week!
Alana Smith is a nurse anesthetist, writer and boy mom (ages 7 and 2), who lives in north Shelby County with her husband, kids and Boxer, Sam. When she’s not writing or chasing little humans, she can usually be found in the aisles of Target. She shares her writings at Holy Moly Motherhood (on Facebook and Instagram), where she takes on all things motherhood and marriage.
