After ridiculously hosting that poor pumpkin, the squirrels finally found a way to eat the thing, and they did.
I carved a Jack O’ Lantern, tried to light it without luck, but it did survive for a day. Halloween having passed, I took it out to the compost where the squirrels aren’t interested.
Meanwhile, there’s a mouse in my house. Black, velvety, fast. Now I’m obsessed with the idea the place smells like mouse. And it’s the reason I’m still up at 2:30am.

I received a pumpkin from one of the realtors who always delivers pumpkins to the neighborhood.  Mine is a small, lovely green stripy orange one,  and true to form, a squirrel already nibbled a bit.

A little nibble that must have been interrupted.  I took the pumpkin in, cut out the bitten part, set it in the yard for the squirrel to finish, while I hoarded the pumpkin in the fridge.  Eating the Halloween pumpkin seemed rude, somehow–so I went on the internet to see what measures to take to guard against squirrels.  The first time I got the gift pumpkin, a nice sized one, the squirrels demolished it in minutes, leaving only bits and the stem.  Same thing the next year, even as my neighbor’s pumpkin remained unscathed.  The third year, I don’t think I got a pumpkin.

I applied vaseline over the orange flesh & applied Hot Sauce, after duct taping the hole from the bite.  Here’s what it looks like:

I’m not sure it really works. What do you think?

Wild Plums © Marek Kosmal | Dreamstime.com

It is our first really cold day here.  Fingerless glove weather, wrap a scarf around your neck weather.  At the Farmers Market I finally got my knives sharpened, and bought okra, spinach, strawberries, peppers, chili, mushrooms and a pumpkin.  The pumpkin I’m going to try in an Indian dish.  It’s the time of the Nine Day Festival in South India, when doll displays are built, chickpeas and coconut salads made, and women visit one another.  Yesterday I lit the light.

After the market, I went to the store, and on the way back, I noticed that bicyclists don’t stop for stop signs.  Maybe they pause minutely?  What’s more perplexing is that they don’t stop for street lights.  They carefully look both ways and run the red light.

Today, from my window, I can see an apple tree brimming with apples.  Easy to climb as well, and old, for a brick driveway was built around it.  Closer to home is a plum tree, loaded with fruit.

I transplanted a geranium yesterday.  From the soil, out plopped a plum, the work of an industrious squirrel.  I now eye the other plants I brought in, and wonder what surprises they contain.  Now I know the reason a squirrel leaped onto the fence and noisily ate a plum in front of me.