It’s the best time of year for pumpkins. They’re really coming into their own right now. 

It’s a great time to be a pumpkin, or a bad one if you’re thinking about it that way. You’re ripe for the picking, and everyone is obsessing over you. But you’re also about to be carved up for all you’re worth. So maybe it would be a horrible time of year to be a pumpkin. Mostly, though, we’re all thinking about them. We’re all making sure that we are celebrating pumpkins in the right way right now. Because if we’re not going to do it, then who will? Personally, I entered a pumpkin carving contest at my place of work, and I did pretty darn well. Sometimes you just have to get elbow-deep in pumpkin guts, and you don’t need to apologize for that. It helps you connect with the world of Halloween in a very tactile way. You have to get your hands dirty, sometimes in order to get the job done, and pumpkin carving reminds you of that. You’re not getting away with being meek about it. You gotta get yourself dirty and scrape out all of those pumpkin guts, if you’re going to do it right. It’s a nice way to feel connected to nature during this time of year. Then you can use those flimsy little knives to carve something amazing to put on your front porch for your neighbors to see. You hope that the squirrels in the neighborhood don’t have their way with your gourds, but let’s be honest, they probably will. It’s up to them to do anyway.