Seth and I work well together. In the case of the Convivio Bookworks website or this, our new Convivio Book of Days blog, Seth is the one who designs the whole thing, and then he hands it over to me. But he does have to get things started, and he is the one who actually began this initial posting. His test post included a photo and a few words. The photograph is of our first successful pumpkin harvest in Maine from one of our big gardening years, circa 1998 or so. The words? A caption, of sorts: Johnny loves pumpkins.
He’s right; I do love pumpkins. A couple of years prior to that photo, during my summer book arts internship printing with Brother Arnold Hadd at the Shaker Press at Chosen Land, the Shaker Community at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, my days often included tasks outside of the print shop: haying, for instance, or weeding the garden. I loved weeding the pumpkin patch best. Something about those trailing vines, those green leaves, the bees in the blossoms, and of course, the ripening pumpkins themselves, set me off to daydreaming. I’d be there, close to earth and vine, breathing the spiced summer air, thinking, writing in my head. The pumpkin patch, to me, spoke of great possibility. It’s a place that begins with a handful of seeds. Sure, there is soil and water and sunlight and good compost at the heart of the conversion of those seeds into big, beautiful pumpkins… but perhaps a little magic is involved, too. A touch of alchemy: the alchemy of the everyday.
Seth may have just been setting up the initial framework for this blog when he typed his words, but Johnny loves pumpkins is, I think, a great beginning for us. It’s his handful of pumpkin seeds. This project is very much about possibility and the alchemy of the everyday and certainly about the ceremony of the everyday. So let’s keep it at that and together, we’ll see what comes of it.
John
Beautiful; website, photographs and, of course, words. Welcome back. You were right, it was worth the wait.
what a wonderful beginning, or rather, a wonderful NEW beginning. i love pumpkins, too.
I have been known to just sit & hold a pumpkin for a long time.
I have introduced the carving of them to several families who had never experienced either Halloween or pumpkin carving (and the subsequent seed roasting) before. That was *joy*. Explaining to a grown couple from India what this insanity was, then seeing them both contemplate their own pumpkins, going to town with vigor & perhaps a little glee (I’m always gleeful about pumpkins.) The resulting beauties they created were amazing & unlike any jack-I-lantern you’d know. It was *fantastic*. The adults always out last the kiddos who get bored before the thing is scooped, but that’s ok. They get to finish theirs tomorrow. The adults can have a glass of wine, pot luck dinner and go back out to finish. That was just. Perfect. Then the lighting & placing them each in JUST the right spot and the area is glowing and smells of warm slightly singed gourd, you’re all sticky & maybe have seeds in your hair but it was worth it. 🙂
Yeah, I like pumpkins, too. (Haven’t had a chance to grow any yet, but I bet carving one you grow would be magic.)
Thank you for this post & the past book of days. I yelped out loud when I saw the post on the book arts list. Glad to see, it’s lovely and works on my phone, I couldn’t be happier!
Pumpkins are one of the few vegetables that have vitamin A and D in a form that people on low fat diets can consume. Most foods with vitamins A & D are high fat foods but the portly pumpkin boasts a low calorie as well as a low fat food. The range of colors in the fall
Keep up the great work!
Always a pleasure, Johnny pumpkin seed! G
I love the rotundity and quirks, scars and webbing; the gnarly stems, and the colors. Yes, those things, and as you wrote, the promise of pumpkins. And love.