Happy Halloween!

Okay.  This was the weirdest pumpkin carving experience in my entire life.  Freaky.  The thing was a honeydew melon diguised as a pumpkin.  I swear.

Here's the whole story:

Of the two pumpkins in our patch, only one turned out to be carvable.  The other one had rotted out on the bottom.  So, I began the day by posing the kids with the non-nasty pumpkin.

The thing was a beast.  Heavy, heavy, heavy.  Made me wonder what the heck was inside.  We soon found out...

Completely solid.  Nothing but solid melon flesh.  Sweet, and not gucky at all, with only a few seeds here and there.  It took an ice cream scoop to hollow it out.

Solid.  I'm telling you.

I kind of accidentally scooped a big hole in the good side of the pumpkin, so we carved the flat, beige side. 

Finally, it was time for the main event.  Here you see Twister and the "Cat Police".  If Trevor's cat features look familiar, it's because they have served as polar bear features for both kids in the past.

We hit the road to meet up with some friends.

And, and hour or so later, there was some major sorting going on.

There was also a bit of sampling.  Giving out candy canes at Halloween?  Really?

It was a lovely, warm night, and we all went to bed happy.  Also happy was the Great Pumpkin, who made off with some serious chocolate tonight.

Pumpkins

Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater could have kept two wives if he'd had these beauties.

They have one more day to soak up the sun before being gutted and butchered.

How our yard is looking these days

I haven't photographed our xeriscaped front yard since it was just a wee thing, so here it is (albeit overexposed):

It's getting rather jungly out there, but I love it.  The hummingbirds love it.  The butterflies are thrilled.  And bees.  Bees all over the place. 

A new (but long dreamed-of) addition this summer was the river:

We ran out of tumbled glass, and need to add some more eventually, but you get the idea – a water feature, without the water.