Pumpkins This is a blog of happenings in my family, with my kids, and with the politics of the world. If you don't get satire you should probably stop reading right now. I tend to ramble on, and on, and on...

First moving into this new place in Tennessee, we were excited because the yard was big enough to actually have a garden (and Zinny was old enough she might not dig it right up). After the move in I immediately started planting, but soon discovered that there were a number of things growing on their own. Firstoff, there was a tomato plant we discovered mowed along with the grass in the yard where we planned to plant the garden. Then there was another one we found under the deck. This second one has proven to be the more prolific, growing to a height of almost ten feet and producing a number of cherry tomatoes. Then out front among the bushes by the porch I noticed some little plants poking out of the soil. One of them still had it's leaves encased in a pumpkin seedcoat so I guessed they were all pumpkin plants, perhaps left from the previous Halloween's decorations. Sure enough they were, and soon they had taken over that part of the front yard - crossing the front walk and into the grass beyond. They produced a multitude of large, orange flowers which I would find open in the early morning swarming with bees flying about. Most of these flowers dropped off, but some were pollinated and began to grow into pumpkins! July came, and then August - a long, dry August which saw many of my garden plants wilt in the sun, not least of which were the pumpkins, so I watered them several times a week. As September approached the rains returned and with them came the powdery mildew which ate away at the leaves of the pumpkins and then the cucumbers. Some of the pumpkins started to turned from green to yellow, and Brittan hit upon a slightly basic solution of baking soda which seemed to retard the powdery mildew's attack. The pumpkins, however, just kept right on growing; producing new leaves almost as fast as the powdery mildew consumed them. As the rains became more regular in September though, the pumpkin plants lost the upper hand thanks to the mildew being joined by a scourge of beetles which sucked the leaves dry even faster than the powdery mildew could kill them. And so this week I started picking the orange pumpkins so they would not rot on the vine, 6 six so far, while I left 3 still green on growing vines to ripen in the sun. Will they last to Halloween? I'm not so sure, but it's been fun having them all the same!