With students returning to school, the Thanksgiving Holiday is officially over.

Above, you see two pumpkins that have been tossed in a retention pond in a suburban neighborhood. Say goodbye to pumpkins and hello to the sights of Christmas: inflatable Santas, living nativities, Christmas tree lots, and the ocean of red and green chicken-wire-light-balls, tossed-high-into-trees in Sunset Hills. On Thursday, when December arrives, our memory of the ubiquitous fall pumpkins will be long gone. Likely, by then, a diligent neighbor will have transferred the above pumpkins from the retention pond to a compost pile.

Retention ponds are human-made basins for managing water run off. They are extremely popular in Greensboro, particularly in neighborhoods that were constructed during the housing boom of the 1990’s. Some communities, Lake Jeanette, for example, made a real effort for these water features to be well-landscaped to enhance the neighborhood. Other places, the Wal-Mart on North Battleground, for example, these ponds are less elegant as they tend to collect litter. 

And yes, as seen above, pumpkins float. Jack-o-lanterns, however, do not……..