It’s frightfully hot and humid nowadays
Is it just me or is this fall a bit too hot and humid. I know everyone is now noticing things are becoming frightful around the city. Halloween time has arrived – with it all the trappings of this fun and fanciful period.
Imaginations run wild: the young are acting old and creepy and the old are dressing silly and prancing around behind their scary evil masks. It is a time to let our hair down, or shaved off, and to just relax and be scary for a short fantasy time.
Summer is over and we all need one more fling before settling down into our studies and settled lifestyles for the coming months.
Fall means pumpkins, police tape, miles of cobwebbed bushes and trees, leering pumpkin heads, scary skeletons walking and hanging around the neighborhood.
Women are whipping up all manner of pumpkin dishes, pies, cheesecakes, cupcakes and smoothies. Everyone had a new pumpkin latts, or pumpkin doughnut yet?
What does this have to do with gardening? Well, not too much around here in Southwest Florida. It is pretty hot, and with a 100-day growing period needed for a mature vegetables such as a pumpkin, it’s not going to work well here.
I am sure someone out there is really growing a pumpkin hereabouts, it always happens. Gardeners know no boundaries when they get their mind set to grow something not rated to be successful for a specific climate.
No need to worry about growing your own pumpkin, plenty of attractive squash grow well. There are fields of pumpkins brought into the area. Check out some of the churchyards, farmers markets, big box stores and right now at Lakes Park in Fort Myers, about a thousand pumpkins of all sizes are just waiting to be chosen for someone’s pie or jack-o’-lantern.
Check out the Internet for various pumpkin festivals, hay rides and costume events. There is one week left to visit Lakes Park over on Summerlin Road where the whole park is in Halloween mode.
The Cape Coral Garden Club joins in the annual Halloween Extravaganza. There is a fenced-in field full of pumpkins and Halloween scenes competing for prizes. They are designed by local schools, colleges, business firms, as well as our Garden Club.
This is a successful charity event for the park which charges for each space and then this sponsored space can be decorated and named by the sponsor or by someone such as a school, who really cannot afford to sponsor a space but can really decorate a great Halloween scene. A lot of creativity shown over there.
Some judging is done by a set of local judges, and also the general public has a vote during this next week. The scenes are numbered and you get a sheet as you enter and pick your choice. There are at least 30 scenes to choose from.
The park also is alive with hay rides, bounce houses and all the other park fun things, including the usual train ride through a scary Halloween countryside.
This ride is not just for kids. It is safe and nothing jumps out to grab you but it is a really a great ride.
The Garden Club has a new Frightening Flora scarecrow this year. Would you believe one of the members made it using an ironing board, plus a few other interesting but easy accessories.? You just need some imagination. What have you done lately with your ironing board?
With only an entry fee $2 parking, it is a great date night or family afternoon / evening romp. I should say that the train ride has a small fee also, not sure about the hay ride – getting too old for that myself, but there was a line waiting to ride earlier this week.
The fun ends on the 31st and you know what that means – Christmas!
Yes, I know Thanks-giving is next, and I do love Thanksgiving, however Christmas cheer has already started and even the lovely poinsettia was on the shelves two weeks ago. I love those things but they are too beautiful to have anything to do with Halloween.
I choose to live one day at a time as much as possible and so will choose to enjoy scary, fun Halloween time until the end of the month: then onto the unavoidable commercialism of the next two months.
I also chose to get out in the yard and do some weeding now that it is a bit cooler. If I am not careful, weeds and grasses will cover up the turkeys and the Christmas trees when it is their turn.
The fact that rainfall is getting less and less just does not seem to deter those darn unwanted grasses and weeds. A gardener must be ever diligent!
Now is a good time to do some mulching and palm tree feeding, be sure and do it in the daylight so you do not meet up with any ghosts or goblins.
Happy gardening till we meet again.
H.I. Jean Shields is Past President Garden Club of Cape Coral.