Happy Halloween!
We had some special guests on the harvest table last weekend: punkins! These three fellers survived the attack of the squirrels and ants, which got some of their punkin brethren. Thanks to the drought, the squirrels have gone to town on our squash and punkins, scratching them open and sucking out the life-giving juju inside. Once penetrated, the vegetables become easy pickens for the ants, which seem to multiply like Baptists at a youth revival full of drunk second cousins. Fortunately for them, we are good sharers. One enterprising little squirrel has no fear and gorged him or herself on the goodies while we worked in the garden. Lucky for him/her, I wasn't wearing my head-mounted pistol at the time.

As you might have noticed from the two fine specimens on the harvest table in the top photo, we also have a bumper crop of baseball gloves, plus a festive stained-glass candle shade that makes the porch look all trippy at night. Also, a plague of habaneros. If you want some, email me. But I gotta warn you: They're hotter than Dorothy Parker describing a 1920's Park Avenue living room full of daffodils on a mild Scotch buzz.