Whether you make pumpkin pies or jack-o-lanterns with your Halloween/ Fall harvest pumpkins, afterwards they have that thick rind which will take time and some labour to compost.

If you have a compost bin or have the space to dig a hole in the garden itself, or you might have a compost pit... the pumpkin is better in your own compost than going to landfill.

Have a little respect for the Jack-O-Lantern and give him a green burial.

If you can not compost check around for someone else who does commercial composting. A local business or someone who does have a garden space or a local grower of just about anything. Bag up the pumpkin or pumpkins and donate them to a good home.

Clean it out

Don't leave decorations, tin foil, candle wax, inside the pumpkin. Keeping your compost to organic matter only makes it simpler later when you use the composted material in your garden. Anything like tin foil or a forgotten candle stub is just one more thing you will be picking out of the compost and soil mix later.

All the pumpkin guts, the stuff you scoop out when you carve a pumpkin, can be added to the compost too. Many people will do double duty and use the insides for pies or other holiday recipes. If you don't, the insides are already mushy and will compost easily along with your regular yard waste, kitchen scraps or anything else you routinely add to the compost heap.

Chop it up

If you start with a whole pumpkin you have a bigger job just because it's that much thicker and bulky. So begin by chopping it up. Even those miniature pumpkins used for decorations can be cut up.

Anything bulky and thick skinned like a pumpkin is going to be extra work for the fungus and little creatures who do the real work of reformatting in the garden. Give them a head start by breaking it up as much as you can.

If you're a bit lazy pull the pumpkins out into the yard, in an area which can get messy, and chop them with the shovel. Let them get a bit on the mushy side before you start so you don't have to break through the fresher, harder rind.

Remove the seeds

Take the seeds out, any seeds left in the compost will begin to sprout and grow a pumpkin patch. This could be a good thing if you have the space and don't mind pumpkins growing on top of your compost heap. But, you won't want all those seeds to germinate - that would take up too much space. If you have ever seen pumpkins growing you know how well they like to wind around and spread out.

Pumpkin seeds can be roasted in the oven as a snack. Just remove the pumpkin from them. Don't actually wash them but pull off the stringy stuff. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or tin foil, spread the seeds out over the tray. You can sprinkle salt on them, or something else that perks your imagination. When your oven is hot put the seeds in to roast. Check a recipe for roasting times and temperatures. I just peek through the glass and decide when they look done enough. They should be dry but not dried out like a mummy.

If you don't want to roast and eat the seeds you can still compost them. Roast them and then toss them into the compost. Or, grind them, anything which will prevent them from germinating in the Spring.

Begin the compost pile up

Gather leaves as you rake them, grass clippings, vegetable peels and such from the kitchen and line a hole with this lighter compost. Bury the pumpkin under more leaves and garden soil. You can add bone meal to help it all compost faster.

If you use a compost bin make sure the lid fits on to prevent rodents from getting in and leaving you a mess to clean up.

Look into composting with worms if you have the space in your backyard/ garden for a compost pit (a hole in the ground which you pile levels of compost material into).

You can also wrap the pumpkin compost in a black plastic bag which will help speed up the time it takes to rot. But, it won't smell pretty when you unwrap it to distribute your compost into the garden.

One of my favourite Christmas things is the tree, all lit up and decorated. The ornaments are a blend of special treasures I bought over the years, vintage ornaments passed down in my family for a generation or three and the real prizes are those ornaments we made ourselves, mostly from some felt, lace and embroidery thread. When it’s in prime Christmas mode the tree is glorious.

That’s why seeing a Christmas tree discarded somewhere, left to become a weathered mess, is so sad. How could some poor tree be plucked from it’s roots, given a grand celebration and then thrown out – treated with less care than the wrapping paper which was once under it.

Why do people do this to the trees? In these days of living green and caring for the planet, when we recycle and reuse and refurbish… why toss out a whole tree this way?

You can see of abandoned trees in Flickr groups. Maybe between now and the end of the year you will see an abandoned Christmas tree yourself. If you can drag it somewhere it has a chance to be recycled, I hope you will.

Three issues for computer users are cleaning, using and dumping them when they die.

Cleaning your computer is more than just dusting it off, weeding out garbage files and backing up your data. It’s detangling all those wires, cables and plugs and getting rid of old discs too. Check an electronics store if you want to spend some money on a cable reel. Or, just pull your desk out from the wall an extra inch and organize them behind it. Bundle up long cords rather than leaving them hanging and crawling over the floor. If you have hardware like a printer, scanner or anything else bulky get a small, sturdy table to set it on nearby. Keep your desk top as clear as you can. That includes coffee cups, hairclips, vitamins, pens and all the other clutter that builds up quickly if you spend a lot of time sitting in front of that screen. Don’t forget to dust off the back of your tower too. If you have a lot of gunk in the air, like pet hair, consider cleaning inside the tower too.

For ergonomics, I always have my monitor raised higher than the desk surface. If the bottom of the screen is at my chin level I’m ok. Anything too high or low will make the back of my neck go numb and give me headaches. They say it’s good to sit with your feet raised but I haven’t done that. Sometimes my feet do get a bit swollen if I am putting in hours and not taking a long break between.

There are no really great recycling options when it’s time for your computer to die. Face it, few people are interested in a computer three or more years of age. Software stops working on them as new operating systems come out. Older computers can not function with the software coming out now. I know from personal experience trying to run a 5 year old PC running on Windows Me. You might try Linux. See how much that can add to your mileage but that brings up the problem of what to do with all your old software which can’t be adapted to run on a Linux OS.

Look online for some options about recycling your tech trash. Nothing will be totally great as you can’t compost plastic. But, there are some options, better than adding all that hardware to the landfills. Don’t burn your computer, please. It’s a bad idea.

Do you recycle your books once you have read and finished with them? I tend to keep most of my non-fiction books but I take all the fiction to a used/ second hand bookstore. I exchange them for new books (new to me). It’s also a really great way to find older books by an author you have just discovered. I’m often lucky and can pick up all the old books for half or less of what I would have paid in the bookstore, if I could find them all in a new bookstore. Stores selling new books can’t commit a lot of shelf space to the older books which won’t sell as well as whatever is the latest.

I also like recycling the books cause there are a lot of trees in those pages. It’s great if I’m not the only one to use that book. I wonder how many readers a book gets sometimes. I tried Book Crossing but no one has ever reported a book I shipped out with the BookCrossing information on it. I have pretty much given up on it. Besides, the second hand stores didn’t really care for the books I had written the BookCrossing tag into.

What do you do with books once you’ve read them? My Mother likes to read them, sleep with them, bathe with them. In the end the books are really dog eared. I’ve rescued a few before she throws them away but she likes to be the last one to read each book. Even though she knows it’s not the best choice as far as the environment and that she could get new books by exchanging them, she just likes to do it her way. I didn’t try too hard to reform her, what can you really do with your Mother?