November 9, 2006 @ 7:37 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
If the Santa Anas are blowing, you’ll want to ditch your jack-o-lantern as soon as Halloween is over. No chilly, pumpkin-preserving, procrastination-permitting East Coast days here, baby.
(Yes, that’s a slime trail of pumpkin juice oozing across the stoop. Gack.)
Funny, we had an identical pumpkin on our front porch here in Orange County! I threw him away yesterday, but he left behind a big white stain at our front door. (I’m embarrased to admit he was also full of gray fuzzy mold when I tossed him out!)
Having lived in Louisiana all my life, I thought this was the normal cycle of a jack-o-lantern. LOL
Ours went in the burn pile a few days ago, after I caught the girls and their neighborhood pals poking sticks in the poor pumpkin’s belly and shouting: “Oooooo…”
Having grew up in CO, the first year we were here in the FL Keys I blithely bought our pumpkins 2 WEEKS before Halloween for Autumnal Decor on the bow of the boat. Picture me preparing to open Jack up and my ENTIRE fist sinking into his head of goo. Gack! is right.
I’m not sure I ever caught the root cause for your cross-country move, Lissa……dh’s work?
I’ve always wondered how people from other parts of the country find the cost of living in California. We’d need farm-aid if my dh were ever transferred there!
Lissa, this one’s for you: The Time Has Come By Jack Prelutsky I think the time has come to throw the jack-o’-lantern out, it smells less like a pumpkin than it does like sauerkraut. Its expression is peculiar, it has
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
It’s -32 with the windchill here. I just threw our two rock solid ones in the garbage. On the bright side no guck!
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 7:58 amI learned the same lesson in FL. Ugh! On the bright side, I bet it would look great under a microscope!
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 8:10 amThat’s a pumpkin carving hazard in Texas too!
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 8:17 amFunny! Last year I discovered ours frozen solid to the front porch in early December. oops!
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 8:39 amToo, too funny! And the little face on that pumpkin looks like a “Peanuts” cartoon!
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 8:56 amFunny, we had an identical pumpkin on our front porch here in Orange County! I threw him away yesterday, but he left behind a big white stain at our front door. (I’m embarrased to admit he was also full of gray fuzzy mold when I tossed him out!)
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 8:59 amThat actually looks very appropriately greusome. And our’s here in the South go out the very next day. Bleh.
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 10:04 amHaving lived in Louisiana all my life, I thought this was the normal cycle of a jack-o-lantern. LOL
Ours went in the burn pile a few days ago, after I caught the girls and their neighborhood pals poking sticks in the poor pumpkin’s belly and shouting: “Oooooo…”
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 11:00 amHaving grew up in CO, the first year we were here in the FL Keys I blithely bought our pumpkins 2 WEEKS before Halloween for Autumnal Decor on the bow of the boat. Picture me preparing to open Jack up and my ENTIRE fist sinking into his head of goo. Gack! is right.
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 2:44 pmI ditto Cay….normal stuff for hot, humid south Louisiana…hey, it happens even before Halloween
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 2:56 pmHooly says:
So…let me get this straight.
We haven’t gotten to see your lovely new house yet but you *do* treat us to pictures of your rotted, oozing pumpkin.
Niiiiice to know where we stand
::::mmmmwahhhh:::::
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 4:50 pmlol it reminds me of the snowmen calvin and hobbes build.
Posted on November 9th, 2006 at 9:41 pmMy poor pumpkins don’t last long in the tropics….Two days later, they’re already moldy!
Posted on November 10th, 2006 at 8:11 amYou did well, having just moved! My pumpkin is still sitting on my sideboard, waiting to be carved.
Posted on November 10th, 2006 at 5:53 pmYeah, yeah, but I think your husband has the real story.
Posted on November 11th, 2006 at 4:54 amI’m not sure I ever caught the root cause for your cross-country move, Lissa……dh’s work?
I’ve always wondered how people from other parts of the country find the cost of living in California. We’d need farm-aid if my dh were ever transferred there!
Posted on November 11th, 2006 at 12:20 pmSt. Therese Academy says:
Poetry Friday
Lissa, this one’s for you: The Time Has Come By Jack Prelutsky I think the time has come to throw the jack-o’-lantern out, it smells less like a pumpkin than it does like sauerkraut. Its expression is peculiar, it has
Posted on November 11th, 2006 at 8:06 pmKind of gives the place a Sleepy Hollow look!
Posted on November 11th, 2006 at 9:23 pmMy pumpkins look like that here on Long Island, where it’s 50 degrees and rainy!
Posted on November 14th, 2006 at 6:42 am