As we harvest our pumpkins and begin to fully enjoy the fall beauty of chrysanthemums and colored leaves, I thought it would be fun to share some Halloween images of the past. All are from Wikimedia Commons. The featured photo of the baby (unidentified) sleeping in a pumpkin is a 1906 lantern slide from the National Library of Australia.

This photo, showing three boys carving pumpkins, is from 1917 and came from the Library of Congress.

The well-known Canadian photographer Conrad Poirier took this shot of Barbara, Pauline, and Dorthy Luck looking out on a spooky scene in 1940. With the permission and cooperation of Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec and Wikimedia Canada under the Poirier Project.

These two boys are from the Book of Halloween, 1919, by Ruth Edna Kelley. Titled “No Hallowe’en without a Jack-o’-Lantern.” (So true!)

An 1890 image from a student Halloween party at the University of Southern California. That’s a LOT of pumpkin carving!

This sweet toddler comes from the California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960. Scratched on the pumpkin is the year “1901,” the pumpkin’s weight of “230#,” and “Raised by J.J. Teague.”

This photo came from a collection from the Waterdown Public School, Waterdown, Ontario, Canada. It’s from 1928. I’m not quite sure if it’s a teacher or a student, but I like her outfit! By UNK photographer: uploaded by WayneRay.

HAPPY (almost) HALLOWEEN!

* * *

Sandra Knauf is the one-woman-show behind Greenwoman Publishing. Her books include the six-volume series Greenwoman (compilations of literary garden writing and art), her young adult fantasy novel, Zera and the Green Man, and an anthology of sexy gardening stories that she says is the feminist gardener answer to Fifty Shades of Grey—Fifty Shades of Green. She was a 2008-09 featured “Colorado Voices” columnist for The Denver Post and her humorous essays have appeared nationally in GreenPrints and MaryJanesFarm. She has also been a guest commentator on KRCC’s (NPR’s southern Colorado affiliate) “Western Skies” radio show. Sandra lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado with her family, dogs, huge urban garden, and lots of books.