Pumpkin, Göteborg, October 24th, 2001

Pumpkin, squash, gourd, zucchini, courgette
so many different cultivated models
edible, decorative, spheres, zeppelins...
On a September compost excursion
you may expect to see them in multiple shapes and colors
but the one in the new lawn,
just a few leaves late in October
will not get the time to show me its fruit.
At least it has been so kind as to make its hollow stems obvious
and thus assure me it would not be a melon
even if it could.

Pumpkins for Halloween
not a Swedish tradition
not when I was a child
nor when my kids were little
back in the eighties, when grandma Elsa
sent Halloween napkins, stickers
and paper-plates in one of her packages of fun food from California.
We eventually used the napkins
and the pumpkin stickers
but we never had the heart to use those preciously rare plates:

They're the 9-inch model
so I had to reduce the size.