A plethora of pumpkins

Pumpkin panorama                 Photo credit: Tom Twaro

Last Thursday, 40 pumpkins were dropped off at our office and we were asked to kindly carve them up. Sounded like a good idea - and we're a creative bunch. My co-workers have been bringing in their pumpkins all week. Most carved one. Some carved two. Some asked their spouses or significant others to help. Our copy director's husband used a power drill to poke holes through the one that's the fifth from the left - isn't that nifty? The crazy glowing porcupine on the far left was engineered by one of our sales guys. I just love the diversity of our designs. Some of the guys built a platform across the shrubberies along the side of the building, drilled holes through the pumpkins and then ran white lights through the whole lot. The panorama pic above doesn't quite capture all of them, so be sure to check out this link. We're very close to a busy road, which makes it impossible to fit the whole length of our display into one shot.

I love carving pumpkins. My freshman year in college, we had a carving contest in my dorm and my team won. I have a photo somewhere of Karl from Flushing posing with our masterpiece. I remember that we were inspired to sculpt our squash rather than go the traditional route. It was nothing like these - but still pretty impressive.

I don't know where we got this year's pumpkins from, but these were no ordinary specimens. None of those lopsided, dented, funky blobs. These were plump and shiny and perfect. I only took a "before" picture of one of mine. I almost didn't want to cut into it, it was so perfect! I decided to go with a classic friendly jack-o-lantern and then a super-simple design I thought might look interesting when lit from within.

Before

After

There's a village near here that hosts The Great Pumpkin Roll every year before Halloween. They started it 17 years ago as a positive response to pranksters who had a tradition of making a giant grody mess. It is now a popular event for all ages that brings the community together and has raised thousands of dollars for the local Parks and Recreation department. You can watch some of the fun here - the action starts around the 1:20 mark.