At this time of year, when the temperatures are cooling, and we're adding fall color to our gardens, the children are gearing up for Halloween and the ubiquitous jack-o'-lanterns. It's easy to make jack-o'-lanterns, and it's fun for the whole family.

First consider where your pumpkins will be placed. If they are to grace the stairs leading up to your front door, select smaller pumpkins for carving. For a focal point on your porch, or a centerpiece for your table, go for a larger one. Just be sure that you choose pumpkins that are uniformly orange with no bruises or discoloration, and are either tall and narrow, or more rounded, depending on the design of your carving.

Next, your tools. A long thin-bladed knife is best for cutting the top hole and large pieces out of the face of the gourd, with a paring knife used for detail work. All of your tools should be sharpened before and after carving, so make this a family affair--with parents in control of all carving tools! The little ones can draw the desired face on the pumpkin with a simple crayon.

Begin by cutting a 5- or 6-sided hole in the top of the pumpkin, about two-thirds the diameter of the pumpkin. Angle the knife so that the lid and hole will be somewhat cone shaped; this will help prevent the lid from falling into the hole.

Scrape the seeds and stringy membrane out with a large spoon, making certain to scrape the bottom flat so that the candle sits squarely. Then carefully carve with your paring knife the face you've drawn on the best side of the pumpkin. Finish up with a white votive candle in a clear glass holder. Or be safety-first with a battery-powered LED flickering tea candle. You may need a couple of these to light your jack-o'-lanterns sufficiently.

Fire safety should be paramount. Never leave a lit candle unattended, and never leave children alone with a lit pumpkin or any candles. Follow these rules and your pumpkins will be your scary pals throughout the holiday!

You don't need to be a botanist to coax flowers into bloom for the holidays.

It's simple, especially when they're Hippeastrum bulbs. Although marketed in the winter as amaryllis, most belong to the genus Hippeastrum from South America.

For the largest number of flower clusters, select the largest bulb. Plant it in a well-draining pot, 6-8 weeks before you want the trumpet-shaped flowers to appear. Make sure the upper third of the bulb is peeking above the soil and water sparingly.

Then stake the flower stalk for support, put a bow on it, and voilà! Don't you wish all your holiday preparations were this easy?

One of the great mistakes many people make in Mediterranean-style landscape design is to incorporate plants that don't blend in with their natural surroundings. To make matters worse, the home owner (or the home owner's gardener) then prunes everything perfectly round or, worse yet, in geometric shapes--giving their home the look of a stage set from the movie Edward Scissorhands.

A house needs to connect with its natural surroundings to feel truly at home. With a little planning you can select the right plants to not only blend your home with the wilder landscape around it but also to create a garden that stands up to the sun and reflects the best that its rays have to offer. The key is to soften plants with formal growing habits by pairing them with free-form shrubs, perennials and grasses.

Most Mediterranean designs use Italian cypress, arborvitae, boxwood, laurel or yew (Taxus) or Olive to define the garden and give it some stature. Now consider house or garden walls that might be softened with the addition of a clinging vine such as Boston ivy or creeping fig. You could also incorporate grape vines on arbors, fences or pergolas.

The next thing to do is introduce motion to your garden with the addition of ornamental grasses. Start with a few closer in the foreground and then consider planting groups of three or more as you move farther out. Ornamental grasses change with the season just like the ones that cover the hills, making them great transitional plants. They are wonderful at reflecting sunlight and many have attractive showy plumes that add another shape to the garden. Consider varieties such as Miscanthus, Pennisetum, Carex or Feather Grass (Nasella).

To give the garden some more visual punch, plant flowering perennials that you might expect to find in a field, such as agastache, aster, coreopsis, gaillardia, geranium (species), lavender, rudbeckia, salvia, and veronica. For some extra color and movement also consider tall stemmed daylilies and statice (Limonium).

Finally, for real standout color, consider adding roses to the landscape. You could create a formal hedge using a pure white rose, or just plant roses randomly throughout the landscape and let them blend in. Roses look great in Mediterranean gardens because it is natural to see roses at the end of grapevine rows throughout Tuscany.

To help conserve water, make sure to cover your planted areas with some type of decorative mulch. To complete the look of your sun garden, consider adding a small-scale fountain water feature and some empty decorative glazed containers. These will add style and form to the garden as well as reflect additional sunlight, sending rays of light throughout your new garden.

We will be returning to Standard Time on November 1st. Remember to set your clocks back one hour Sunday the 1st, at 2 am. Or set them early and enjoy that extra hour of sleep!

Smoke detector batteries should be changed yearly; the change to Standard Time is also a great time to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. Properly functioning smoke detectors save thousands of lives every year.

Unfortunately, plants are not like the fish in your tank that only grow to the size of their home. Plants grow root-bound when the amount of plant root volume exceeds the amount of soil volume in their container.

To check, gently lift out your plant from its container. If you can see mostly roots and very little soil, then it is time to transplant your plant into a larger container.

Select a container that is about 20% larger in volume than your existing pot. A good rule of thumb is not to use a container that is more than 4 inches wider and deeper than your existing root ball. Use a good potting soil and make sure that the top of the existing root ball is even with the top of the soil in the new container.

When you are done, you should have no more than 2" of new soil surrounding all sides of the root ball. Add a little starter food, such as Dr. Earth Organic 2 Starter Fertilizer,, water in and you're good to go!

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