Welcome to Halloween! The most wonderful day of the year. I adore Halloween and all of its fixings, and this year, spending the holiday in Alabama (rather than my native California), I've been lucky enough to experience some truly awesome things, like a hay maze, a giant bin of corn, and the spooky scarecrow trail. Tonight, after we hand out candy to all and sundry, we're going to be heading for a haunted corn maze, which I am assured will be spectacularly awesome.

Mary asked me yesterday when my love of Halloween and pumpkins and all such things began, and I replied, after a relatively brief pause for thought, that it started basically at birth. I've always loved Halloween, just as long as I knew there was a Halloween to love. It never occurred to me to be afraid of it. Afraid of Halloween? Might as well be afraid of Christmas, or Easter, or Arbor Day! Only none of those holidays were anywhere near as fantastically amazing as sweet, sweet Halloween.

I'm sitting in a warm kitchen, surrounded by color-changing trees, eating candy corn and doing my administrative catch-up for the day, and I couldn't possibly be happier. Here's hoping that everyone has a fantastic Halloween, however you choose to celebrate the day, and if you hear a funny noise in the cornfield outside, no, it isn't Johnny.

It's me.

So Mary and I have found this poem:

Spos'n the witches began to witch,
And you didn't know which witch was witch?
Well, spos'n?

Spos'n a h'ant appeared to you,
An' an old black rooster up and crew?
Well, spos'n?

Spos'n a pump-kin pumped hot flames,
From a place, you know, what nobody names?
Well, spos'n?

Spos'n a great big bug-a-boo
Reached out his long sharp claws for you?
Well, spos'n?

We both believe that we've seen it before, and that it is thus probably traditional, or a very close variant on something that is traditional. Lo, I beg of thee: can you find the source of this poem? We've sought. We've searched. We've...mostly told bad jokes and eaten candy corn.

Help!