October Thought Day 29: Living in a Pumpkin Paradise

There is a quote that says, “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” I don’t know that it would necessarily have to be a pumpkin, but this time of year, I would happily take a pumpkin throne. I am reasonably certain I would also have a pumpkin crown and pumpkin scepter to go with it. If the pumpkin were big enough, and some of them are, I’ll bet I could find someone to carve me an actual throne out of a pumpkin. Oh, now I’m getting ideas….

I meant to go to the pumpkin patch this year; and not to find a pumpkin throne either. I dreamed of all the oddly shaped wonders I could find. I poured over carving templates and crafty ideas. I tried to decide which color I would get and what size. It was a pumpkin delirium that I didn’t want to come out of.

In my pumpkin buying frenzy of a few years past I think I bought 31 pumpkins….ok, it may have been closer to 40. This year I didn’t make it to the patch at all, but I have some pretty wonderful friends who supplied me with plenty of gourdy goodness in all forms. Yesterday I got to carve them. Ok, I had help and it was only one, but it was very satisfying. I bucked tradition and didn’t do my normal face; instead I carved a ghost that looked frightened. On the template I chose the ghost looked adorably alarmed. On my pumpkin representation, he looks scared to death and has jazz hands. Ah well, you can’t win em all. I named him Mortimer.

While I was carving I was thinking about my pumpkin throne and all the different ways we use pumpkins this time of year. Naturally my curiosity got the better of me and I turned to the internet to assuage it. For instance, did you know that this month a champion weight pumpkin at a fair in California tipped the scale at 1,910 pounds (which is more than the weight of a U-Haul)? It had to be brought in on a flatbed truck and moved to the scales with a special hydraulic system. Such a behemoth could be used to make over 600 pumpkin pies, but that’s not even the biggest pumpkin on record. The world record holding pumpkin weighs in at 2,623 pounds. What on earth are they feeding these things, small animals? I am content with the ones that are the size of a standard classroom globe. I have no idea what I’d do with a giant pumpkin other than carve a throne or make a small play house. I went back to the California pumpkin contest and looked at some of their statistics and had a good chuckle, because the first award winning pumpkin won at a whopping 132 pounds. I think pumpkins have gone on steroids since then.

Weighing isn’t the only world record pumpkin related activity around. There are places like Keene, New Hampshire that have set a world record in most carved pumpkins lit outdoors and displayed. There were 30,581 pumpkins used to set that record and I can’t even begin to imagine what that would look like. The good people of Keene have set up a thirty-four foot scaffold to display a majority of the pumpkins, but even it can’t hold them all.

But simply carving in bulk is old news and now there is a new trend in pumpkin mania, pop up pumpkin displays called Rise of the Jack O’ Lanterns. The displays will be made up of more than 5,000 hand carved pumpkins and they will all be lumped together to create one tableau. Think of a dinosaur or a car being made entirely out of pumpkins. Each display will take 10-15 hours to carve and in addition to the large displays there will be smaller works of pumpkin art. When I carve a pumpkin it looks like a third grader did it. These people who basically make sculptures out of pumpkins amaze me. They can do portraits and scenes from paintings; it blows my mind, the creativity of people.

Like my friend who made me a pumpkin diorama. She hollowed out a fake pumpkin and then created a haunted house tableau on the inside. There are bats and toadstools, moss, a mansion, skeletons and more. She even lit it and decorated the outside of the pumpkin. Stuff like that energizes me. What talent and creativity. My other friend painted me a pumpkin man on a rock. It isn’t a big rock but the detail is fantastic. I have it propped up in my room to enjoy and like my fake pumpkin; I will have this rock till the end of days. Both shall be cherished parts of my décor.

With all this pumpkin creativity around, my challenge to you is this, get out of your pumpkin rut and do something different. Carve something new, visit a pumpkin patch for the first time, find a pumpkin celebration or make your own. Maybe even wrap yourself up in a blanket and watch your very own pumpkin glowing by the light of the moon and take a mental picture of it. In short, enjoy the wonderful fall gourd in a way you never have before.