Pumpkin pickin’ time
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Four-year-old Lily Wind was on a mission Sunday morning. With Scouser, her bulldog puppy nipping at the bottom of her Sleeping Beauty costume, Lily tracked through the Environmental Nature Center’s Fall Faire pumpkin patch searching for her perfect pick.
Carrying a supposed winner over to a rock where her family waited, she would tell her mother, “I like this one.” Scanning the crop one more time just to be sure, another potentially perfect pumpkin caught her eye, leaving the one in her clutch forgotten, thudding to the ground, as she made a beeline for another round.
“It’s amazing how something as simple as a pumpkin can entertain kids like this,” Kimberly Wind said, watching her daughter on the hunt for at least the sixth time since they had arrived at the patch.
Kids of all ages wandered through the hay surrounded by more than 1,000 pumpkins — and that was only a fraction of the action going on that day at the nature center in Newport Beach.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., scores of pumpkin-hoarding children, their parents and some grandparents trekked around the 26th annual Fall Faire constructing fall crafts, playing carnival games and hiking through the nature walk on a scavenger hunt.
Work began at 7 a.m. for the nearly 400 volunteers setting up booths for food, plants sales, a silent auction, face painting and more. Even Newport Beach firefighters set up shop, cooking up chili dogs on department’s barbecue.
Pumpkins were transported from the back of the property to the site of the patch in the parking lot by a train of children, said Bo Glover, president of the nature center.
“It’s great to introduce families to the things we do here,” Glover said, referring to the event as the annual “friend raiser.” Money for the center helps, but having the community aware of its exist- ence is just as necessary, he said.
There’s something about a pumpkin event that brings people together as a community before the holidays come around, Glover said. Fall seems to be the perfect time to hold the nature center fair, since during the summer everyone is away on vacation. Plus, being the beginning of the school year, autumn is the perfect time to get known by the local school crowd, many of whom make frequent class stops to the site, Glover said.
That is exactly how Dennis O’Hern, former social studies teacher at Newport Harbor High, discovered the place — by accompanying his good friend Bob House, who headed the Science department at the high school for years, on class trips to the nature center. O’Hern found it a quiet place to escape all the urban noise.
“I come here to bird watch occasionally,” O’Hern said. However, nowhere near the birds on this Sunday, O’Hern volunteered his time selling pumpkins out in the parking lot to raise funds for the center. It gave him a chance to catch up with some old faces.
“I get to see people I had in class 30 or 40 years ago,” he said.
By this time, a group of people had gathered around Scouser, petting him or just watching as he marched around the patch, occasionally pausing to gnaw on the top of a pumpkin or two. Lily, on the opposite end of the patch, made her way back to her mom with another orange candidate in her arms.
“They’re my favorite color,” Lily said.
Maybe this last choice would make it home for the young girl to carve.
Then, thud, the pumpkin fell to the ground, and Lily was off again, into the patch, searching for the perfect pumpkin.
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