On Sun, 29 Dec 2019 10:30:47 -0500, Dave Smith
> wrote:

>On 2019-12-29 9:52 a.m., wrote:
>>
>
>> My wife's sons had two giant pumpkins ot their front entrance as
>> decorations. They were going to trash them but my wife said she'd
>> take them for deer food. Yesterday I hacked up two forty pound
>> pumpkins and we tossed them out in the yard. This morning most was
>> gone but still some for tonight. Would have been a shame to toss them
>> in the trash when the critters could enjoy them... we saved some seeds
>> for planting.
>
>My wife likes to put pumpkins on the porch for Thanksgiving decorations.
> Bear in mind that our Thanksgiving is around mid October. They freeze
>and thaw a few times before they are removed. Some of them have turned
>pretty mushy by that time so we stopped using the really big ones. They
>are too hard to deal with when they go soft. I take them around to the
>other side and drop them along the edge of our property and the critters
>get to eat them there. Occasionally a pumpkin plant will appear the next
>year.
>
>
>My wife also likes to use small gourds for interior decorating. Years
>ago we started tossing them into the composter when the decorations
>changed, and every year we get gourds growing there so we never have to
>buy new ones.
>
Those volunteer squash are better than anything I tried to grow. They
did very well on the compost pile
Janet US