ABOUT 4 MONTHS

You probably saw the pictures. I decorated for the fall this year. Sorry. LAST year. Where does the time go. Not the Halloween portion of the fall but the ‘leaves falling in the fall’ fall decorating. Remember when the only Halloween decorations there were, were on the 10 and under set? What happened? To be fair, who ever heard of decorating for the fall 20 years ago. Sure there was the occasional pumpkin on a porch but only because my dad was too lazy to throw it in the trash. I dunno. I think It’s my favorite time to decorate now.

Christmas used to be the big scene when it came to all out decorating and I used to really be in it to beat the band but, as the kids got older and started to care less about such things I abandoned the routine. I picked it back up when the grandkids were a bit younger but they’ve entered the ‘meh’ faze so now it’s just a candle in the window and a wreath. I….I guess I’m ok with that. I’m tired.

I decided to save the pumpkins and gourds and use them next year. The corn stalks and hay bales too. I’m fairly cheap when I wanna be and since I spent, um, less than a hundred but north of $75 on squash I thought I could dry them out and reuse. The gourds, sure. People do it all the time but pumpkins not so much. I decided to prove conventional thinking wrong.

I should say at this point that my wife of lo these many years said this idea was stupid but then she’s only college graduate, a homeschooling veteran of most of twenty years and a church administrator so really, what does she know. No horticultural background at all. So I moved forward.

The pumpkins sat out a while before I got around to stowing ‘em (2 months) but I put up some nice racks in the rafters of the shed finally and hoisted them up.

“Bad Idea” she remarks.

“Everybody’s a critic” I reply.

“What if they rot? Then What?”

“Pssshh. They ain’t gonna rot. I know what I’m doin’. I read up on it.”

“You Googled it? What’d it say?”

“Dunno. I couldn’t find anything but sometimes you just know things. It’s just man intuition”

“ Well, I’M not cleaning it up.”

Doubters gotta doubt.

I walked out to the shed the other day. It was raining pumpkins. man. Pumpkin guts everywhere. The floor was covered. The workbench was orange, my tool box was full of seeds and slime and a rather large rat who was enjoying the feast stared at me from the rafters. He seemed content so I let him be. I should mention at this point that the reason I had a rat was NOT because of the pumpkins storm but rather because I have no soffit vent screens to keep him out. A fact a certain homeschooling veteran has pointed out a time or two but being the genius that I am I chose to ignore THAT bit of wisdom.

Well, It’s cleaned up now. I did it with my bare hands because there’s GOT to be a price to pay for a good education. I set a trap but so far there’s been no return trip from Templeton. Things are pretty much back to normal in the shed other than the smell. I DO have one pumpkin still up there, because I’m a genius. I guess I did learn that, on average, a good pumpkin will last you, about 4 months, all things being equal. Also, rats like pumpkins. I didn’t know that. And, I guess I learned that my wife is smarter than I think. A fact I have to admit to...about every 4 months...