Growing Food: Halloween Fun

Happy Halloween!

It was twenty degrees when I got up yesterday morning, so my growing season is definitely at an end. And the Halloween decorations on my table aren't strictly food, either. But they are fun! Let me show them to you.

I already showed you the calendula blooms I salvaged from the two remaining plants before the frost. I got these calendula seeds from the MiL a few years ago, and they are a very appropriate orange. 

Perfect for a Halloween table. (The parsley did not go on the table.)

We don't grow true pumpkins, but we do get some squash that are round and orange and look enough like pumpkins that we can carve them into jack-o'-lanterns. In past years, we've had enough for each child to have one to carve. This year, while we did get some pumpkin-looking squash, we didn't have enough to sacrifice any for Halloween decorations*.

We did, however, have one tiny, mostly orange squash that I designated as our Halloween pumpkin this year. It was immature, and that meant that the flesh was very soft. A nice change from our typical squash with skin as hard as metal. Carving our home-grown squash is usually a workout. This little one was refreshingly easy.

It had some scarred skin on one side, so I carved the scarred side with a "scary" face (a very mild scary) and the unscarred side with a happy face. It had a point on the bottom and wouldn't sit securely, so I had to set it inside one of my glass candle holders.

Stick a candle in there and . . . 

So cute!

And that's the story of how I grew my very minimal Halloween tablescape. I find this sort of thing very satisfying, so it was a nice way to close out what was a very disappointing garden season.

Have a fun Halloween, whatever that looks like for you.

* Yes, it is possible to cook the carved pumpkins and save the flesh to eat, but I didn't really want to do that. It's a pain, what with trimming away the charred bits and having to peel and chunk it all to steam it. I don't want to do that, so I didn't.