Tis the season to be scary

So, Halloween is rapidly approaching. I love Halloween, really I do. My problem lays in the fact that it is not really Halloween in the Southern Hemisphere; that it is really Beltane, not Samhain; and that time is so very limited right now that I feel as though I scarcely have the time to smell the roses, never mind picking some to decorate the home.

That being said, With X in preschool he has become very aware of Halloween (based mostly on the fact he has yet another excuse to dress up as a pirate, I suspect) and is really quite excited. This of course reminds me of the joy of the season so we have been celebrating our 'Samhain' in a spring-like fashion.

While we have been tending our garden - 2 enormous zucchinis to date and plentiful herbs - we have been discussing how the seasons work and why there is a cycle to everything. So, as we have in Halloweens past, we will be celebrating this year by carving our newest jack-o-melon. Since I totally made that up on my own years ago and to my knowledge have been the first person to jack-o a melon rather than a pumpkin, I totally claim it. Yep, you heard it here first folks ;P

Behold! the Jack-o-melon!
Our two previous jack-o-melons turned out quite spectacularly. The first was an astonishing success, liberally sprinkled with a sense of wtf? It WORKED? And the giddy overload of happy-creative-hormones.

Jack-o-melon. Type #2.
So this year we will be carving our melon and we also plan to have our own little Halloween party the weekend before. Which will probably include a vast array of winsomely scary treats and a child's Halloween movie, followed by something suitably adult-scary that I would probably do best to avoid.

Added to this should be some fresh flower decorations and possibly some window drawings if I can rustle up a chunky chalk pen.

All in all, a respectable nod to the false Samhain and another venture into teaching the children the importance of seasons, seasonal eating, respecting the earth and drawing a shitload of skulls.