autumn days

The backyard has been filling up with leaves falling from our neighbours cherry and apple trees and our maples. So we've been sweeping them up and T has been helping by collecting them in a box and then strewing them on the garden. My sister-in-law is taking a master organic gardening class and is now my go-to resource on composting and working the soil. So all organic matter goes on top of the garden to rot over the winter and give up lots of lovely organic matter for next year.

Today T's preschool class visited the Pumpkin Carving Man - Steve is amazing. Every year he carves hundreds of pumpkins in the week before Hallowe'en using a jigsaw, a dollar-store scraper and a drill. He raises money for the burn unit and the local school kids go on tours around his garden to see the pumpkins. Of course, it started to bucket down rain as soon as we got there and stopped once we got the kids back to preschool but they had fun watching the pumpkin face being made and then running around the garden looking at the pumpkins and other Hallowe'en decor - T was particularly impressed with the "old pirate ship" in the fountain.

When I picked up T from daycare, the kids were "raking" leaves into piles and then jumping into the piles and throwing the leaves all around - each other and all over the lawn again!

When we got home, T decided we should carve our own pumpkins but mummy was much slower getting the guts out of the pumpkin (no scraper) and T was bored with it all by the time I had done. Now I have a big pile of seeds to toast and a gutted pumpkin all ready to carve.