Saints Souls and other Spirits

This Halloween we learned that a pumpkin works really well as an incense burner.  White sage-filled smoke can be seen wafting through the holes to 1) chase off bad spirits, or 2) smell really nice like chaparral campfire.

Did not have time to carve the rest of them:  Masked pumpkins to the rescue.

A gibbous moon rose on Halloween as the thin stream of trick or treating kiddies slowed to a stop but the spirits and candlelight flickered on until after the last scream of George Romero's epic "Land of the Dead".

Not All of Them, but plenty of souls and at least one saint were on hand to continue the celebration right through El Fin de la Semana de los Muertos.

In spite of a brutally hot and dry summer or maybe because of it, the Mexican marigolds, in their annual never-miss example of day-length dependent blooming, began to flower just in time to call the souls of the dear departed on their Day.  Tagetes lemmonii also never fails to attract cactus flies, Copestylum mexicanum, those dark dipteran souls of early winter that apparently hide away as larvae in rotting cactus, unseen until the tagetes blooms.

The unavoidable clean up and put away ensues.  Everyone, and this includes you hanging headless person, back into the Rubbermaids until next year.

Meanwhile the marigolds will bloom on for a month or so, the cactus flies will meet up there and mate, lay eggs in someone's rotting cactus, ensuring next year's supply of All Souls' Flies.