Halloween and Gardening

Yesterday was Halloween, so we did the obligatory pumpkin carving.  We had left it quite late to buy pumpkins (the day before) because previously we've had carved ones go mouldy before Halloween!  This meant the ones that were left were fairly small, but the girls still had fun designing and carving.  Usually my husband carves the pumpkins, but I had to do it yesterday.  Carving - fine! Good fun and creative. Removing seeds and string - horrible! It was really hard (yes, I know pumpkin is a hard veg [pedant me: fruit], but I thought this was an activity kids were meant to do!) so the girls gave up, and left it for me to do.
But, we're happy with the results.

As it was Halloween, my church does a Light Event each year instead.  Rather than the usual party, they set up a table on the street and gave out "Bags of Hope" - party bags containing sweets, colouring pages, a leaflet about the church, and John's Gospel.  They also were doing hot dogs, and party games.  Despite having 100 bags (actually they had 200 in total, as this was set-up in two locations), they had run out after an hour, so had to pop to Tesco to buy even more sweets.  Hopefully the response they had is encouraging.

So today, we have the job of using up the rest of the pumpkin.  As the shells were on the floor outside last night, we're not going to use them, but I'm going to roast the seeds for a snack and use the flesh we did manage to retrieve to make pumpkin bread.  I'd like to make cornbread, but I'm not sure I have any cornmeal left, in which case I'll make a more normal loaf.

Also, some new plants that I had ordered arrived yesterday.  We got a knock at the front door last night, so the girls ran to the front to offer sweets to the trick or treaters, to discover a tall box standing alone on the doorstep, as the delivery driver drove away.  The box contained 2 standard patio roses, to replaces the ones that never grew last year; 40 plug pansies and some basket raisers.  I currently have the last of my dying cherry tomatoes in the baskets out the front of my house, so thought I would replace them with the pansies for some winter colour.  As the baskets are high up, and even on my kitchen steps I can barely reach them, I bought some basket raisers to make my job easier. Unfortunately, it's pouring with rain today, so I don't fancy doing the gardening now.  It's been very dry (but freezing) recently.  I was glad this morning when I awoke and it wasn't so cold, but I have a day free to do gardening and I don't want to miss it.

I'm sure the neighbours think I'm crazy though.  All summer, whilst other houses had beautiful flower displays hanging out the front, whilst I had mainly empty baskets.  When the tomato plugs arrived, they were half dead, so didn't grow as bushy as I hoped they would - not helped by there being a heatwave when we were on holiday for a fortnight so when we returned they were half dead, again!  The tomato plants were still fruiting until very recently, which is why I hadn't removed them sooner, but now I have baskets of dead/dying plants out the front - very in theme with Halloween!  The pansy plugs are tiny, though, so when I do plant them it will look, yet again, that I have empty baskets hanging out the front.  Oh well!  Hopefully they'll bloom.