Warm Welcome

by Wild Thing

Title

Warm Welcome

Artist

Wild Thing

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Chrysanthemum: � (wealth � optimism � cheerfulness � abundance)
Chrysanthemums are some of the most popular flowers in the world, next only to the Rose.

Now so widely cultivated, there are a huge array of chrysanthemum colours and shapes. Colours range from vibrant lime green to rich red, brown and yellow, not forgetting of course pinks, whites and other pale pastel colours. Decorative varieties include chrysanthemums shaped like huge pom-poms, much smaller round-headed "kermit" blooms, spider-shaped chrysanthemums and various others, not forgetting the traditional daisy-like chrysanthemums and chrysanthemum blooms.

In some European countries, the chrysanthemum symbolises bereavement - most notably in Italy, France, Belgium and Austria. Chrysanthemums are only ever sent in these countries at a time of sadness, death specifically. In the UK however, the chrysanthemum holds a much more positive sentiment, used widely in all lines of floristry. Florists, customers and recipients alike often cannot fail to love the vibrant colours and wild shapes of this most versatile flower.

A pumpkin is a cultivar of the squash plant, most commonly of Cucurbita pepo, that is round, with smooth, slightly ribbed skin, and deep yellow to orange coloration. The thick shell contains the seeds and pulp. Some exceptionally large cultivars of squash with similar appearance have also been derived from Cucurbita maxima. Specific cultivars of winter squash derived from other species, including C. argyrosperma, and C. moschata, are also sometimes called "pumpkin". In New Zealand and Australian English, the term pumpkin generally refers to the broader category called winter squash elsewhere.
Pumpkins, like other squash, are native to North America. Pumpkins are widely grown for commercial use, and are used both in food and recreation. Pumpkin pie, for instance, is a traditional part of Thanksgiving meals in the United States, although commercially canned pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie fillings are usually made from different kinds of winter squash than the pumpkins frequently carved as jack-o'-lanterns for decoration around Halloween.
Halloween

Pumpkins are commonly carved into decorative lanterns called jack-o'-lanterns for the Halloween season in North America. Throughout Britain and Ireland, there is a long tradition of carving lanterns from vegetables, particularly the turnip, mangelwurzel, or swede. The practice of carving pumpkins for Halloween originated from an Irish myth about a man name "Stingy Jack". The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger�� making them easier to carve than turnips.] Not until 1837, does jack-o'-lantern appear as a term for a carved vegetable lantern, and the carved pumpkin lantern association with Halloween is recorded in 1866.
In the United States, the carved pumpkin was first associated with the harvest season in general, long before it became an emblem of Halloween. In 1900, an article on Thanksgiving entertaining recommended a lit jack-o'-lantern as part of the festivities that encourage kids and families to join together to make their own jack-o'-lanterns.
Chunking
Pumpkin chunking is a competitive activity in which teams build various mechanical devices designed to throw a pumpkin as far as possible. Catapults, trebuchets, ballistas and air cannons are the most common mechanisms. Some pumpkin chunkers breed and grow special varieties of pumpkin under specialized conditions to improve the pumpkin's chances of surviving a throw.
Pumpkin festivals and competitions
Giant pumpkins are orange variants of the giant squash, Cucurbita maxima. Growers of these "pumpkins" often compete to see whose pumpkins are the most massive. Festivals are often dedicated to the pumpkin and these competitions.
The Ohio towns of Barnesville and Circleville each hold a festival every year, the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival and the Circleville Pumpkin Show respectively. The town of Half Moon Bay, California, holds an annual Art and Pumpkin Festival, drawing over 250,000 visitors each year and including the World Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off. Farmers from all over the US compete to determine who can grow the heaviest pumpkin. The winning pumpkin regularly tops the scale at more than 1500 pounds. Leonardo Urena, from Napa, California, grew the winner of the 2011 Weigh-Off with a 1,704-pound Atlantic Giant, setting a new California State record. The record for the world's heaviest pumpkin was broken September 30, 2012, at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts. Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island, entered a pumpkin weighing 2,009 pounds. A few days earlier on September 27, a pumpkin grown by Steve Geddes of Boscawen, New Hampshire, weighed in at 1,843.5 pounds at the Deerfield Fair in New Hampshire. That one held the world record for just five days. Prior to that, Guinness World Records had the world's heaviest pumpkin set in 2010 by Chris Stevens, at a weight of 1,810 pounds, 8 ounces, at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Stillwater, Minnesota. The town of Morton, Illinois, the self-declared pumpkin capital of the world, has held a Pumpkin Festival since 1966. The town, where Nestl�'s pumpkin packing plant is located (and where 90% of canned pumpkins eaten in the US are processed), held for several years a record for the number of carved and lit pumpkins in one place, before losing it to Boston, Massachusetts, in 2006. A large contributor of pumpkins to the Keene Pumpkin Fest in New Hampshire is local Keene State College, which hosts an event called Pumpkin Lobotomy on its main quadrangle. Usually held the day before the festival itself, Pumpkin Lobotomy has the air of a large party, with the school providing pumpkins and carving instruments alike (though some students prefer to use their own) and music provided by college radio station WKNH.
Switzerland's largest pumpkin festival hold by Jucker Farm in September and October, claimed a new international record by a pumpkin weighting 953.5 kilograms (2,102�lb).
Folklore and fiction
There seems to be a strong connection in folklore and popular culture between pumpkins and the supernatural. Famous examples include the following:
Folklore
A commonplace motif of people being turned into pumpkins by witches.
The jack-o-lantern custom discussed above, which connects to Halloween lore about warding off demons.
Fiction
In the folk tale Cinderella, the fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a carriage, but at midnight it reverts into a pumpkin.
Linus' belief in the Great Pumpkin in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts.
Juice from a pumpkin has magical effects in the short story "Pumpkin Juice" by R. L. Stine.
In the Harry Potter novels, pumpkin juice, a favorite drink of the students of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is a recurring element.
The pumpkin hurled by the "Headless Horseman" in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Jack Pumpkinhead, a character in the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, with a pumpkin for a head on a wooden body, brought to life in the second book.
In Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, the main character, Jack Skellington, is "the Pumpkin King."
Precious Ramotswe, the fictional detective from Botswana in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith, often cooks and eats pumpkin.
In a short fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Feathertop from 1852, a witch turns a scarecrow with a "pumpkinhead" into a man.
Iconography and commercialization
Association of pumpkins with harvest time and pumpkin pie at Canadian and American Thanksgiving reinforce its iconic role. Starbucks turned this association into marketing with its pumpkin spice latte, introduced in 2003. This has led to a notable trend in pumpkin and spice flavored food products in North America. This is despite the fact that North Americans rarely buy whole pumpkins to eat other than when carving jack-o'-lanterns.

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October 27th, 2015

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