When you have had pumpkins hanging around since October and you’re not going to eat them…
Wednesday 22 January, Sunny, 5°C
I have an idea for today but B is having none of it. “No, you’ve had all the ideas this week. It’s my turn. I’ve got loads of ideas.”
Me: Great. Shall we do something first thing in the morning?
B: No, after school.
After school I query more. “So what are we going to do for the challenge. There isn’t much time till sunset?”
B: I don’t want to do it now. I want to do it when it’s getting dark.
Me: Ok. About 5ish then?
We get to 4.45 and I tell her it’s time to go. “Where are we going? Garden?”
B: Err, yeah ok.
I’m not convinced she has an idea but some of our best times come when we have no plan at all. She gets to work gathering leaves from the few plants still growing and puts them in the big metal fire pit. She wants to burn them but I point out (I’m annoying myself too) that we did that on Monday (see challenge 346 – Exploring willow sticks with help from the chiminea). This is definitely becoming a trend, with both of us. We do something good and then want to go back and do it again. It’s not strictly against the rules but I’m trying to get us to do new things each day. Also the fire pit is too wet to burn.
We’re a bit at a loss and then we notice the pumpkins. We picked them back in October at a local pumpkin farm. It was great fun. We had a night time picking session so it was dark and we stumbled around the fields with a group of friends picking up, examining and taking ages to find the perfect ones. Inevitably we ended up with far more than we needed. We carved two and left the others to carve for Christmas… then never got round to it. I didn’t want to throw them away so they’ve sat in the garden ever since. I pick one up and hand it to her. “You could try smashing it”.
She’s not sure at first. She’s not instinctively destructive and they were all very pretty, but then she throws a little one down and it cracks open in three places. She has another go. Definitely fun. Very messy but it’s January and cold and the garden can cope. I wonder idly if the birds will like it. Guess we’ll find out. We get through the little ones quite quickly which leaves the really big one. Its hard for her to lift but she does and it takes several throws to finally split it. Then she continues with the bits, throwing them over and over. They don’t get much smaller but they bounce in lots of interesting ways.
When she’s finished with the pumpkins she turns her attention to the big metal fire she was planning to burn things in and adds some of the pumpkin to the bits of plant already present. It had the remains of a fire in it so there are burnt twigs and charcoal bits as well. She ponders.
“We need water”.
We get the hose out, fill a bucket and she adds it in. The pumpkin bits and the wood bobs spookily on the surface and she stirs it.
“It’s a cauldron”.
It does look really like one and we’ve gone back to the potions challenge (see challenge 355 – gathering ingredients for potions) again. It’s brilliant how they stay with you and build on the next ones. She stirs a bit and then she gets a stick and splashes it a lot. She’s definitely right. She does have the best ideas.
< Adventures with litter picking (345)
