Halloween

Halloween is the time when the most important garden product is the pumpkin. When our four kids were small and still at home, they each picked out their own pumpkin from some farm stand to carve into Jack-O-Lanterns. Jeff, the youngest, seemed to be drawn to the largest of all pumpkins. I wonder what he would have done if he had been present at what seemed to be the pumpkin capital of the world. This was when Kay and I drove over a hill going down to Half  Moon Bay in California. There, spread out before our eyes, was the largest concentration of pumpkins we had ever seen. It seemed as if there were millions of them. Poor Jeff would have been lost in the multitude. More recently we have watched as Jeff's two children picked out their pumpkins from a much smaller collection.

Kay still carves out two Jack-O-Lanterns every Halloween and puts candles inside. They sit in the living room window, grinning at the world outside, and at the little trick-or-treaters that come to the door. Design your own Jack-O-Lantern on the Net. Or how about some Halloween recipes?

This is the time of year that gardens in the northeast of the US are winding down. In the vegetable garden the tomatoes, those that even escaped deer predations, are mostly finished. During this year's prolonged drought, deer that used to generally stay in the woods until winter, foraged more widely. They seemed to have a taste for only half of each ripe tomato at a time. One big bite. Also for the tops of the tomato vines. Their tastes were quite exclusive. Some flowers or plant leaves were eaten and adjacent items were untouched. Unfortunately the Datura were in the latter category. I wonder what a flaked-out deer would be like. Last winter I placed cakes of strong smelling Irish Spring soap within shrubs that had previously been admired by deer in order to ward them off. It worked. Barbara (Cottage Garden), however, claimed that she must have Irish deer as the soap did not faze her herd. There are times when I am sorely tempted to get a pet Cougar. About the only advantage afforded by the drought was the ability to forego the weekly lawn mowing.

That is now over as the fall rains have