Day 223: Halloween

Today is Halloween, All Hallow's Eve. It is one of the four cross-quarter days of the year (close enough...). Coincidentally, it's also the start of the autumn Bike To Work Week - is it really five months since the last one already? I've been cycling in quite regularly of late, in whatever weather to prepare myself for this week. And we're off to a good start - a beautiful sunny morning, though the stiff breeze made cycling along the beach hard work... As I climbed the hill, a pair of ravens were expressing their displeasure at a bald eagle floating in the wind at tree-top height. The journey home was just as nice, the city lit up by the late afternoon sun as I passed Trimble Park.

But come the evening, I couldn't resist going out to look for more pumpkins to photograph. I didn't have to go far - within a couple of blocks of home I started running into all manner of carved pumpkins to an intermittent soundtrack of shrieks and bangs from fireworks. A few groups of Trick-or-Treaters were cruising the streets, including one particularly funny group of teenagers who offered the most dismally-unenthusiastic "Trick or Treat" when a front door opened before them. The smell of pumpkin mingled with that of the leaves and fireworks to make for an interesting aroma - skunk was mercifully absent. I spent about three-quarters of an hour seeking out ghostly, ghoulish and even superhero pumpkins, and found these two below on my way home. They won the day for me :-)

Cannibal pumpkin