Ernie Emotion wears a batch of emotion leaves at the Irene Stacy Community Mental Health Center pumpkin patch.

The pumpkin patch near the Irene Stacy Community Mental Health Center is the site of more than pumpkins.

Housed at the Butler County Community Gardens at the Sunnyview Complex nearby, the patch also is home to a scarecrow named Ernie Emotion.

While scarecrows were built in previous years by youths attending a therapeutic summer camp at the mental health center, this year's project was different.

Past scarecrows enhanced the gardening activity at camp, but this year's scarecrow also was used to launch discussions about emotions.

According to therapists Cricket Angert and Amy Serrian, youths in the five-week program began by building the scarecrow: a typical straw-filled figure dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt.

Feelings were incorporated when Angert and Serrian offered an assortment of foam leaves on which Serrian illustrated facial expressions.

Rick Lake, director of the children's partial hospitalization program at Irene Stacy, said 36 different emotions were depicted on the leaves — partly to help youths identify their feelings beyond just happy or sad.

Included on the leaves were expressions of optimism, boredom and remorse."It's more than just angry," Lake explained. "Are you frustrated? Are you hurt? It allows the kids to understand the spectrum of those emotions."With 16 campers participating in the scarecrow project, each youth could select more than one emotion, describing the recent feeling and elaborating on how and why it occurred — sometimes suggesting ways they could have responded better.In the end, the scarecrow was adorned with the leaves, which Lake said served as important symbols."We carry those emotions all the time. Sometimes they're expressed on our face. Sometimes they're not. But they're always with us," he said.Serrian said discussing the emotions also allows youths a way to feel less isolated."With children, sometimes they think they're the only person that feels this way," she said.Angert said as well as providing a successful exercise at camp, Ernie Emotion seems to be warding off a resident groundhog and skunk.With the scarecrow's help, the therapists hope the garden's 150 plants will produce 100 pumpkins — enough for each of the campers this season. Angert said the current five-week camp, which began Monday, will result in a second emotions scarecrow.

Ernie is designed to help youngsters deal with their emotions and has also done a pretty fair job of warding off a resident groundhog and skunk. At rear are therapists Cricket Angert, left, and Amy Serrian.