Time for my favourite time of the fortnight - the Hive Garden comment challenge! You might notice a few changes, namely, the thumbnail image - I've had some issues with the app I was using and a change is as good as a holiday, so they say! Good ol' Canva seems to deliver, so here it is - I hope you like it! You'll notice it on @minismallholding's bi-weekly newsletter, and on the new challenge coming up in November!
A quick side note - a conversation with @ligayagardener this week brought up two things - one, woodlicespiders munch on slater bugs - r woodlice - so yay for pest control (has anyone got a barrel of them to post to me?) and two, check this map out of the different names they call slaters in the UK!
On to the winner of last week's comment challenge - @jhero22, for his gorgeous comment about gardening with his grandmother and all she has to teach his family, and how learning about garden is so important for independence. He wrote:
If you will not know how to plant and grow your own foods then in the future you'll starve to death because you can't depends on other people always. You gotta do it with your own hands. If your hands might get dirty then it's okay as long as you have some fruits, vegetables and other crops to harvest later..When we go to do some gardening , there's always something I can share to them and that's what make the whole experience memorable and worthful. I will be always grateful to my grandma and to my late grandpa also for filling me with all the infos about gardening. With it I can live on my own already.
If you are missing a reward from me, check your wallet - I just did my Hive Garden wallet admin today, sorry for the delay!
The challenge this week is, of course, HALLOWEEN - or Beltane if you're in the south and would rather celebrate the appropriate pagan festival for your hemisphere.
Pumpkins, gnomes, witches, scary spiders - bring it on! Alternatively, of course - blossoms, eggs, fertility symbols. You get the idea.
- Do you have a garden decoration for either celebration to share?
- Have you ever seen a ghostly or witchy spirit in the garden?
- How do you celebrate either event with nature & your garden?
- Is there a cultural alternative that you celebrate this time of year, and what does that have to do with your garden?
- How was your pumpkin harvest this year?
- Share a photo of Spring or Fall and describe what it means to you.
You should comment with at least 50 - 100 words, and do comment on others as well. You'll be upvoted by me and @gardenhive, our curation account - and the winner each fortnight wins 5 HIVE!
Shamelessly tagging garden journallers to join in!
@plantstoplanks @sofs-su @nikv @owasco @buckaroobaby @farm-mom @thebigsweed @polesinns @andrastia @holisticmom @queenoftheworld @porters @amygoodrich @fanyokami @phoenixwren @anafae @tanjakolader @yolithy24 @andrastia @minismallholding @goldenoakfarm @nateonsteemit @sanjeevm @kennyroy @simplymike @dodovietnam @babeltrips @trangbaby @kaelci @shanibeer @proto26 @ifarmgirl @foxfireorchards @artemislives @edprivat @meesterboom @momogrow @attn @luckylaica @blingit @traisto @skylinebuds @fotostef @tydynrain @hindavi @vibeof100monkeys @samstonehill @anttn @friendlymoose
With Love,
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These are all the pumpkins I got this year. Sometimes I will drag out my old autumn wreath but haven't in several years. But I don't decorate for Halloween. It's more an autumnal thing and remains until the day after Thanksgiving. And knock wood, no spirits here besides my husband who is often in evidence...
Autumn is not my favorite time of year as to me it's an ending. It's often gray and gloomy and gets colder as it progresses. Some years, and this is one, the foliage is glorious, but that doesn't, in my mind, make up for the other stuff.
I love this. It's really more a symbol of Autumn which is what I see Halloween as, and why I feel uncomfortable with it here in Australia late October!
I love how you say your husband is often in evidence - that's very sweet and very powerful. Those we love never truly leave us, and that's a good thing..
I do love the way that Americans decorate to honour the Autumn - Fall. Its LOVELY and makes me want to go in, expecting to sniff freshly backed cinnamon cookies and soup. Probably pumpkin soup.
It feels so incredibly wholesome to me!
Have you ever had pumpkin pie? I never have... intrigued.
Yes... soooo many american expats here and yes, it's EVERYwhere here at the moment. Halloween incoming followed by Thanksgiving.
I quite like it.... esp with home made coconut icecream on top. YUMMMMM....
It was a fine afternoon, we decided to spend a few minutes in our school garden before going home. We surveyed our squash (family of pumpkins) to look for its male flowers and put them in with female flowers (cross-pollination).
In the middle of the silence (all students went home already), we heard a scary noise coming from somewhere! (OMG, what was that?!) It was like the sound made by a character in the horror movie "The grudge".
As we listen closely, we concluded that the strange sound came from the vast pile of leaves and vines covered with the wide leaves of the squash.
Unfortunately, there is one flower of squash in the area where the sound came from. We were troubled by the scary sound but we were determined to get that one last flower.
My colleague courageously went up there to pick the flower. Moving very quickly, he ran fast as he could after getting the flower.
He told us what he saw. And you know what was it? The scary sound came from a dark brown big fat frog!
I certainly am scared of frogs!
haha.... that's funny. Yup - we have lots of frogs in our garden and they can give you quite a fright!! I've even picked one up thinking it was a stone once!!
Pollinating pumpkins by hand is something I'd forgotten about - we have a lot of MOSQUITOES in Thailand and they're actually amazing pollinators.
Hahaha omg this is the best Halloween horror story in the garden! Love it! You created suspense beautifully. Thanks for this - loved it!
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @riverflows ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
Not entirely personal garden or pumpkin related (although it IS) - I have decided to step up to help @riverflows, poured a heap of compost on @theherbalhive and accepted the challenge to bring my green thumbs to our sister community to help coax her back to abundant herbal hiving health.
Soooo.... gardeners and commenters alike, please pop over and add something to our Halloween post thread: The Herbs That Scare You.
https://peakd.com/hive-141827/@hive-141827/herbs-that-scare-us-halloween-community-comment-challenge
@buckaroobaby @ligayagardener @jhero22 @attn @samstonehill
definitely promoting our sister comment challenges!
Sounds like a great move to me!
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Thank you for the opportunity @riverflows😊 I'll see what I can share for this weekly comment.
In reality, more than this year's harvest, I should refer to last year's harvest since in this part of the hemisphere the pumpkins are just starting to come out.
We are finishing consuming at home what we harvested in May-June of this year before the rigor of the first frosts ended up burning them.
By the way, I have been told that you have to let them take a little cold because, as happens with citrus fruits, the cold concentrates the sugar they contain even more: is it true?
In the photo, a pumpkin of the anco-batata variety, that is, a new sweet potato also called sweet potato.
Oh we have these cute little pumpkins in Thailand - they grow sooo fast and here they grow all year round. I super enjoy cooking with them cos they are so easy to peel and with few seeds.
I've seen Thai people locally creep them UP like vines, rather than growing them on the ground - the humidity here and the thin skins combined not great in terms of rot. And so they trellis them up the sides of the rice barn and create a little sling support for the baby pumpkins.
Next time I see it I'm gonna take photos and post about it.
Oh i didn't know that about the cold! But it makes sense!!!!! Some plants - like elder - need cold to smell good. Roasting pumpkin also brings out the sweetness!
This is the first time I saw this kind of pumpkin. It looks very different from what I used to. Pumpkins here in the Philippines look different.This one is cute and looks delicious @goisal 🥰
Do I ever SEE spirits in the garden? Sometimes it feels like I see the luminescence that was them, a half a moment after they have fled.
In Thailand, people are bewildered. Not about seeing spirits - because they're considered a REAL day to day, NORMAL part of living. They're bewildered that western people DON'T think spirits are normal for the everyday human.
The spirits of every place are honoured - guardian tree spirits, and the spirits of place - homes, gardens, offices, shops all have a special "spirit house". Personally, I don't feel the need to leave cans of soda or rice cakes out to "feed" them nor to have a dedicated doll house for my garden spirits 😆 but the vast majority of Thai people do. Normally, each Thai house has a spirit house, and people leave their offerings out at dawn. This magnificent tree spirit in my Thai village of Baan Wat Kong Sai regularly receives gifts and offerings - people tuck incense sticks and flowers under the sash. And yes, that's me, walking to the local market in front of the temple, touching base with the tree spirit.
In my own garden, I tend not to have one spot to honour the spirits, but many. I'm more inclined to leave a plumeria bloom on the grass, or under a beloved plant or tree, as the mood takes me. In Thailand, most houses are planted with red plumeria specifically to appease and calm the spirits. And my house is no different....
Do I find the idea of spirits scary? Errr.... no. Hence I really don't personally celebrate or cultivate the idea of "scary Halloween".
But a PUMKPIN COCONUT THAI CURRY? Maybe soon... 😋
Oh I do love how some cultures revere the spirits in this way. It's an attentiveness to the natural world that western cultures lack.
There's definitely scary spirits around too. I've been some places in Australia where the energy is terrifying and I've had to leave in the middle of the night. Wierd shit. Been shouted off bridges in the UK too. If there's good spirits stands to reason there's some you don't want to mess with. Light and dark and all that.
Love that pic of you and the tree! It's classic!
One day, in hopefully the not too distant future, you and I will watch Thai schlock horror films and drink wine. Yes, definitely there ARE malevolent spirits everywhere too. Perhaps in Thailand they're over-fed and lazy?? LOL
Haha gawd I always recall being on buses in Thailand and watching (or trying to avoid watching) horror flicks...
hahaha... yes - what IS THAT ??!! they DO always show the absolute schlock horror at midnight when people are trying to relax.... 😆
Same here @artemislives, I don't think the idea of spirits is scary at all. I am more scared of big and fat frogs, I would say😁
But I do respect those people who are scared of spirits, though.
I grew up calling Slaters 'Woodlice' and only changed a couple of years back.
I've seen plenty of spirits and had ghostly encounters in my travels but the one that worries me is the one that keeps making food just disappear. It's golden blonde and shaped like a Labrador but it can't be Athena because she whenever the food disappears, she's' just sitting there with that 'it wasn't me, you haven't fed me today' look that she's so good at.
Hahaha yeah it's the dawg. She has you fooled it seems 🤪