I always spend a lot of time on my pumpkins. I prefer, in fact, to work in ephemeral media. No matter how badly you foul up a pumpkin, or a sandcastle, it's gone soon. (I worked in newspapers for years.) There's always another pumpkin tomorrow, as Scarlett might say. Here's one of my favorites, from the patriotic year of 2001:
This year was the first that Joe wanted to get in the process, and I certainly wanted to include him. Just as I did when I was little, he loved ALL of the process, not just the plan to reach the end. He liked to look in the pumpkin at the mess inside, and to discuss things that might go on the pumpkin, and to consider the pumpkin as undiscovered artwork.
And then he saw the patterns that came with the pumpkin carver. All heck broke loose. He wanted ALL the patterns. This represented a challenge for me, as I am not a pumpkin pattern man. I am a freehander, even more so than my father, who used a ballpoint to sketch the gourdish destiny.
At first, and for some time, I felt cheated. Where was creativity? Where was the art? Does Andrew Goldsworthy use a template from Stop and Shop? He does not. Carol had to soothe me.
I'm still ambivalent. But Joe loved his dragon, even if it did come out of a pamphlet. And he liked the witch, too, which had the important elements of fright, even though, lacking a template, I freehanded it. "You can just carve it," he reassured me. He requested "a scary hat, scary eyes, and scaaaaary feet." You be the judge. 
