Tons of pumpkins and some creepy creatures

Last Friday night was the highlight of the Halloween season so far! My mom and I saw probably the most jack-o-lanterns we've ever seen together in one place. The jack-o-lanterns were in a public park along with all kinds of homemade creatures and displays. It was all extremely cool and made me feel like a kid who was just in awe of everything. I felt like I kept saying, "Look over there!" all night.

This picture was taken far away from the line of pumpkins. Neither end of the line made it into the frame and this line of pumpkins was several rows deep. It might be kind of hard to tell that because of the crowd. As you can see, there were a lot of pumpkins! I think there were over 1,000.

Here are a few of my favorite carvings, starting with a graveyard:

Does anyone recognize this flaming face next to Spider Man? There is something so familiar about this design.

Grr... That's a feisty little pumpkin. I like that ghost too.

This snake is one of my top favorites. Look, they even carved the motion of the rattler!

A skeleton fish and sugar skull:

Do you remember that old Simpsons Halloween Special where Bart plays the part of the raven, while Poe's "The Raven" is read by James Earl Jones? Well, here's the Bart Raven in a carving! I was so excited to see this one.

You have to love this!

I like what is happening with the top of this devil/mask pumpkin. I don't know if the top was set like that purposely but it gives this cool hair-like effect. And how neat is that cabin with trees? I like how they scraped a layer of pumpkin off to make the little cabin.

A bat on a skull?

I know about the Evil Dead movies enough to understand this, although I haven't seen any of them. Still, I can appreciate a good carving! That chainsaw had to be tricky to cut.

This is like a beautiful Henna design!

There was a band playing and their stage was lit up in blue lights. Those lights made a really cool, electric contrast to all the orange pumpkins. That blue and orange combination created some of my favorite pumpkin pics of the night. (And yes, I'm realizing that I'm saying that about pretty much all of the pumpkins.)

A frog-owl?

It was like the pumpkin patch came alive and a bunch of creepy critters sprang out of it. Like these pumpkin zombies:

And this weirdly human-like pumpkin couple:

Yikes! Doesn't he look real? I thought that without the flash, these looked like real people in costumes.

And their incredibly creepy pumpkin baby! Look at its leaf-like hands. I knew I was in for something before looking in the baby carriage, because I could see the reactions of those who were looking in there!

We could see pumpkin experiments happening through the window of a building.

Through another window there were pumpkins and this floating ghoulish head that looked like they were painted with blacklight paint.

Slimy zombies were stumbling toward us!

Someone did a great job with this one.

I was tempted to lighten some of these photos, but I didn't. I wanted to show just how spooky these things looked in the dark.

There was a hearse with a driver that looked like he climbed out of the back.

There were a number of those cut-out face creations around.

I'm onto him!

After walking around for some time, we went inside a community type building. Outside of that building was this awesome reaper display.

You have to love this one:

Looking up on the way in, I saw a... something. The feet crack me up!

This tall pumpkin creature was by the entrance. He barely fit in the space.

There were of course more cool decorations inside. A kid was setting off the music that went with these props and doing some kind of jig while I was taking this pic.

I imagine this would make a good photo op for a group of people if they wanted to peek through the eyes and mouth.

These are possibly vintage and genuinely creepy.

We were surprised to find out there was a magic act happening inside. It was a pretty good act by one of the more friendly magicians I've seen.

So, it was a super great night. I can't remember the last time I was surprised and creeped out by Halloween decorations. A lot of the displays I'm used to seeing seem store bought or like something I've seen before. These homemade ones were much more atmospheric than I'm used to! It didn't hurt that there was a bright moon in the sky and the trees were glowing orange from all the lights. The whole thing felt classic, welcoming, and old-timey.

Not surprisingly, there was a big crowd out wandering around and taking pictures. So I'm happy to say this event was appreciated!

Beautiful and Dangerous Nature

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've been blogging, because it finally thawed out around here and I have to be outside! Can you believe we had snow in late April and today we had over 80° weather? Because I haven't been checking in here much, I've ended up with a number of things to share. So this is going to be one of those Justine's favorites kind of blog posts.

Something I wanted to be sure and share with you guys was a display from last month's Art in Bloom at the Milwaukee Art Museum. You might remember Art in Bloom from past years. If not, it's a wonderful show of flower arrangements that are interpretations of the art.

This arrangement was in the Haitian gallery space. Check out that skull!

This display had a lot of exotic looking plants in it. I actually took a photo of the plant list, because some of these were new to me. I was especially interested in the spidery or octopus looking one in front. This one:

After googling pics of every plant on this list, I didn't find it. So if any of you know what that plant is, please let me know! Here's the flower list:

This is the painting that goes with the floral display, Baron Le Croix (Bawon Lakwa) by André Pierre. If you read the "Designer Statement" at the bottom of the flower list, you'll understand a little bit about the painting and the symbolism. Although, I'm pretty sure you guys had a general idea of what's going on here.

It's worth reading this brief paragraph about Baron La Croix:

Baron La Croix Wiki Page

"The ultimate suave and sophisticated spirit of death" How about that?

Speaking of new and spooky flowers, I saw these little cuties in the woods a few days ago. I was told that these are Bloodroot, and from a google search it would appear that's correct. They don't look like they'd be called Bloodroot, do they? But from what I just read, the juice from this plant is both red and poisonous. And the flowers look so innocent!

If you'd like to read more: Bloodroot Wiki Page

If you read down to the "Toxicity" section on that page, you'll learn why you shouldn't mess with this plant! What I read here is actually pretty scary. To put it simply, do not apply this to your skin because it will destroy your tissue. Don't ingest this or you might vomit or pass out. And you might want to check your mouthwash for "sanguinaria" (another name for Bloodroot) because it could lead to oral cancer down the road. Wow! Nature can be pretty powerful and not always in the best of ways.

Another find in the park was this "Tree Bracket Fungus". I would have called it Seashell Fungus. Don't these look like shells?

From what I've been reading, some of these are not super healthy for trees, but people have turned this bracket or shelf fungi into art. Evidently, it's super hard and makes a good painting surface. If you google "Tree Bracket Fungus Art" you'll see some pretty cool examples.

In other nature news, some of you may have seen this little zebra spider when I shared it on Twitter.

I blogged about these once before. Some fun trivia about zebra spiders is that they don't make webs. Instead, they sneak up and pounce on their little insect victims like a cat! By the way, these spiders are much smaller than this one appears! They're like half the size of a normal ant. Ah, the magic of cropping.

This next picture was scary for me only because I didn't see more than one deer with my eyes before taking it. Then I looked at my camera screen in surprise! There were six deer that I could see, standing out in the open. But those behind this obvious deer totally blended in to the trees. Deer aren't exactly scary, but not realizing there are extra eyes upon you is!

Now that I'm studying this photo, I don't even know if I'm seeing more eyes in the woods! I think I may have just spotted a fifth head back there. I ended up seeing a good 10 in this herd, but who knows how many were actually there.

Onto a view of the outdoors at night. These are pics of the last two full moons we've had. They appeared very differently!

March 31 ~ The Sap Moon:

April 29 ~ The Pink Moon:

It's worth reading this page: Full Moon Names if you'd like to learn why each full moon has the name it does. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing my past month or so in little pieces. I'm finding it fun to write this way, with a little of this and a little of that. Let me know if you guys are seeing any new and interesting plants or insects. Everything is popping out now!