Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 When I was in third grade, one of the first big assignments my class received was to create a pet rock. I suppose the idea came from our teacher likely having lived through the first pet rock phenomenon, but this assignment required deeper thinking than just sticking a rock in a box with some makeshift bedding. Our pet rocks were to truly be created. Given their own unique look, a personality, and, of course, a name. As someone who has always enjoyed creating characters and giving backstory to things, I was excited about this assignment. I dug around in the yard until I found a rock that I thought would be the perfect shape to be made into a unique character. That night, I brought the rock inside and pored over every googly eye and bow and bead we had (my parents made and sold crafts at the time), while my parents stood impatiently with the hot glue gun, until I’d found the perfect combination, and a little being, who I immediately named “Mindy” came into existence. (This picture is f

No one finds the perfect pumpkin by accident.   Those who love Halloween, and can’t wait for that perfect autumn day in the pumpkin patch, will tell you that that moment, when you find the perfect pumpkin among hundreds of its brothers and sisters, feels like fate. Those who truly know pumpkins, can tell you that it is. We’ve all seen it, those moments when our pumpkins begin to rot. It almost always starts out as a small, soft circle. At first it almost looks like a simple bruise, the kind you’d get from bumping into something, when you’re too busy thinking about something else to really watch where you’re going. For a pumpkin, though, this is often a death sentence. Once these soft spots appear, it’s only a matter of time before the rot progresses. They must, at the very least, be taken outside before they get softer and begin to leak, don’t they? But while these soft spots do often mark the beginning of the end of a pumpkin’s life cycle, hardly anyone thinks to look closer. There ar