Carrick to Calgary

Yes indeed - Halloween is just around the corner (coinciding, I believe, with the changing of the clocks - boo!!). Anyway, given today's weather, you certainly wouldn't have pegged this for a late October day. This time last year, it was pretty baltic - we'd had snow that had to be shovelled off the drive, and every living green thing was pretty much brown and crispy. Today, we had bright blue skies and temperatures reaching about 20 degrees C - and yes, that is PLUS 20 degrees C. Long may it last. However, I did find myself looking rather critically at the grass this morning, wondering whether it should be cut... I then told myself that it would be better for its long term health if it was left slightly longer. Laziness will always find a good excuse.

Funny sort of a day today- got up, ate breakfast, made curry for dinner, made several pumpkin lanterns and then helped a friend move about 50 boxes of books that she had stored in our basement in to her new house.

So what's with the pumpkin lanterns... ? Halloween is taken pretty seriously here in Canada, and unlike home, we don't get children wandering around the streets doing 'trick or treat' for about 3 weeks before the big night. Nor do we get children expecting every householder to give them money. Everything is done on Halloween night itself; children get dressed up and go around the neighbourhood in groups (or with their parents if they're small) asking for 'candy', or collecting for organised charities (with collection boxes, certificates of authenticity, collectors badges etc - so you're pretty sure you're not getting scammed!). Isn't it awful to be so cynical...?

Anyway, as its a pretty big thing, lots of people decorate their houses, and there's a big pumpkin theme. If you're not keen on having real pumpkins lying around the place, you can buy large orange plastic bags (called 'leaf bags') that have scary faces on... you can stuff them (with leaves if you have any, I suppose), and dot them about your garden. Other people fill little orange bags with scary faces on and then tie them to long pieces of string and drape them around trees. Having been to the market yesterday, it was fairly obvious where people were getting their pumpkin inspiration from...

Outdoor pumpkins...


Indoor pumpkins...


Pumpkins in a box...


By the way, the pumpkin sellers are still trying to raffle off their monster pumpkin, but I'm not sure that winning the pumpkin would be a good prize! In fact, we heard one lady saying that she really would rather not win it, as she wasn't sure she could actually manage to use all of the insides. There's only so much pumpkin pie a person can make...


Anyway, being visually assaulted by so many pumpkins, nothing would do but we would have to buy a couple and have a go at carving...



So here is the goof's guide to making pumpkin lanterns...

First assemble your tools - sharp knives, gutting tool, spoon and tealight ... (you also need a felt-tip pen for drawing your design before you cut it out, but the pen didn't make it into the picture). Small children will need to be supervised!! (That's a very un-Albertan thing to say - in Alberta, the attitude would be that if you didn't know that children should be supervised in the use of sharp implements, then you're too stupid to be in charge of small children!!)


First you have to cut out a lid...insert sharp knife at about 45 degrees and cut around carefully...


Then take the lid off to expose the pumpkin's insides...


This is where we got a bit confused because we thought it would be pretty solid inside, just like a butternut squash. But as you can see, its all just orange fibrous stuff and seeds...


This stuff all has to come out (referred to by Mr White as pumpkin gutting - in the true spirit of Halloween!!)...


And the result of pumpkin gutting...


This is what a cleaned out pumpkin looks like...


Once you get to this stage, you can then sketch out a design. We decided to stick with the traditional approach, and make a face. Fancy websites suggest that you can carve bat shapes, or skeletons, but we figured that we beginners should keep it all fairly simple...This is Mr White's design...


And if you follow that master plan - this is what you get! Pretty good, eh?


So, we had three pumpkins, and this is what we got...


And here is how they look in their full glory!



By the way, the answer to last week's question about the broom nailed to several other pieces of wood in next door's front garden - it has been turned into a Halloween scarecrow! Thanks to dad who suggested that the contraption was simply a way of being able to find the brush when we got several feet of snow! Please note the fluorescent green bats in the window, and the very cool skeleton (which I think is made of big 4 litre milk containers ...


And on a final note (back to weather as always), here is the reason for the rather warm weather - this is our very own Chinook arch...bringing warm air all the way from the Pacific Ocean...



So on that note, better go and see how the curry is looking.

More later...

P