I have a pale roundish orb sitting on my kitchen table. It’s been slashed into submission by the relentless jabs and gouges of a sharp knife. It has aspirations towards orangeness, but to be perfectly honest it’s more of a pale brown than orange.

My wife has a fond spot in her heart towards pumpkins, well not pumpkins per say, but jackolanterns. Actually you could almost say she hates pumpkins, because she likes cutting them and disfiguring them into wildly outlandish frontispieces. This year we were a little late on the draw—as of yesterday afternoon we had no pumpkin, rather an increasingly anxious desire to acquire a pumpkin to subject to our frightful designs. We hopped in the car with two objectives: get cider, and a pumpkin.

The first objective was easily accomplished; yet we were repeatedly stymied in our pumpkin quest. I drove all over town. We searched 9 places (all in vain) for pumpkins and were consistently disappointed. “No, I’m sorry, they’re all gone…”

It was looking more and more like the pumpkin genus would escape our sharp clutches—and yet we are resourceful. At the ninth place our creativity kicked into 6th gear. If not a pumpkin, perhaps a large pumpkin shaped and nearly orange coloured gourd? Yes, of course; that will do perfectly fine. The orb on my table? It’s a gourd.