Come and buy pumpkins

Every fall we sell pumpkins we grow on our little hobby farm.  It is the only thing we either grow or raise on our farm that we sell to the public.

We sell about 500 - 600 pumpkins each year at the budget price of $3 each.  We used to sell for $2 but, you know, inflation.  

The kids love it because they get to split all of the proceeds.  The rule has been that they save half of their share, and the other half they call "Pumpkin Money" and they get to buy whatever they want with it (within reason).  It is fun, and they like going out to the cash box every night to bring in and count the sales.  Though we also Venmo now.

Why am I writing about selling pumpkins?  Not sure, but William Tychonievich's latest post referenced a goblin-alien selling pumpkins in the overall context of his post titled "Come buy, come buy," was still their cry.  

There are some other interesting things in that post, including his stringing some spreadsheet words together to form the phrase:

Ask these, for when many water[s] them their every need did [provide], why then [did they] come buy?

Because Humpty-Pharazon and Numenor is a theme these days, and on my mind among many other things, I read this phrase and instantly understood it or imagined it as a question from the Eldar living on Eressea posed to or about the Numenoreans.

In essence, they are asking why, when every need and blessing was provided to the Numenoreans (except power over death, of course), as they sat among the 'many waters' lifted up from Earth on their own Paradise, did they still 'come buy'?  By "come buy" we can probably assume this is a play on words or double meaning.  Come buy, but also come by.  Buy, meaning as to 'procure', usually with an exchange, but also 'by', as in arrive at their place?  Why did the Numenoreans break the Ban and 'come by' Eressea, taking what was not theirs?

They stole some things, basically, and although we might not think of this as a 'purchase' or someone 'buying' something, it did cost them - dearly.

William wrote a post a couple months ago titled "A loaf of bread is dear".  Dear can mean expensive, as he pointed out, which is what someone says when purchasing or thinking about purchasing something.

In Words of them that Slumbered, it is said that the Numenoreans drank and destroyed nectar and light associated with Lilies grown on Eressea.  The Wolves that were unleashed on that island "consumed there all the fruits and bulbs gathered, and drank up the pooled light of ancient vintage".  Pharazon himself, as the island of Eressea was split in half, drank from these lilies;

And yet now bereft of his soldiery fearsome even to the gods, he having drank his fill of the lilies cup, gilded though in his hand had it turned, so Pharazon bolted the heart firm to Thu's [Sauron] plan, and purposed then and there to row, if alone as king maybe, upon the shore of Lands Undying, and finally claim title wrongfully withheld for all the ages of Man...

... King of the World, and over every breath there taken in, and every cry to hear, so he named himself, Willful, Chosen, Fated:  Three in One, King of Air, Earth, and Wave.

So, they drank of the lilies, and then burned it all up.  Pharazon indeed was a Sitter o'er the Sea of Flame, as William's Humpty proudly proclaimed, as a Holy Land was burned.

This nectar, or whatever we should think of it as, we learn in another part of the story was used to make the Bread of these inhabitants of Eressea.  When they found and took care of Asenath, they fed her bread that they specifically mentioned was leavened by the light:

Thus she [Asenath] was of the fall of your flesh much redeemed, and healed' being renewed upon the land, for our bread is leavened of the lilies that long ago drank up the light blessed, castabout the Magic Trees Remembered...

So the Bread is Dear, indeed, I am afraid.  And Pharazon and the Numenoreans bought it all, not fully understanding the price they were paying.

Anyway, I originally was just going to post a picture here to show the pumpkins we sell since you can't include pictures in comments (I was just going to leave a picture in William's comment section), but then my mind started going down this Pharazon and Numenorean path again.  

With that pretty interesting string of words from William's excel sheet, with the Elves asking that question, basically, I guess that even though I said that repentance is available for Pharazon, there are still some unanswered questions that these Elves might have related to what was done to them, perhaps.  Why did you do it?  How could you do it? 

There will be an opportunity to come and buy milk and honey "without money and without price", I think.  Notwithstanding our broken world.  As Nephi wrote (similar to Isaiah) in 2 Nephi 26:

Behold, doth he [the Lord God] cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price.

Coming and buying, though, will be done in quite a different manner than the way in which Pharazon and the Numenoreans attempted to do it.  Clearly.  And I think that is where the story I have been thinking through points to.