All-purpose, no waste Halloween pumpkins!

Now that Halloween is past (1 week ago!) , our pumpkins are on their way to completing a full circle, turning to compost for other plants in our garden.

We had a lot of fun carving the pumpkins for Halloween and put tea lights in them that we lit in the evenings. After we scraped out "the guts" from the insides, we roasted the seeds after letting them dry out for a day, at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, in several batches on cookie sheets, turning over the seeds now and them so that they roasted evenly.

Some people like to toss the seeds in olive oil first and add herbs and spices. But we just like to eat them plain roasted (I don't eat the shells, so it's more of a chore to eat them, splitting them open for the inside kernel).

After about a week the pumpkins REALLY look like scary jack-o-lanterns, getting moldy and squishy, with hundreds of little black gnats in them.

Now they look VERY interesting!

And it's time to cut them up with a trowel and disperse around the garden so that they can decompose and feed the soil and plants.

And here lies part of big-eyed pumpkin to feed the irises and rosebush.

While part of Squishy Face is feeding the soil in another part of the garden.

After I distributed the squishy pumpkin pieces I noticed a squirrel keeping an eye on me from nearby. I think it was getting ready for a snack.