Sunday, October 16, 2016

Pumpkin Paradise


So. Last fall I bought a couple of pretty fine pumpkins from the Amish family we usually visit in Clark, MO. One was quite bumpy (warty) and one a vivid orange. I did not bring them in during the autumn and after Mom's stroke, I did nothing outside.


So from that pumpkin mush grew enormous vines at the end of our ramp. Mom came home from a hospital visit in July and little vines had to be pushed aside for her entrance. I stayed in the house and just laughed when visitors said the vines were amazing out there...  The UPS man  and everyone else talked about the great big pumpkins...


I just smiled, visualizing the controlled, smallish vines I saw in July. Well, we had tons of rain this summer. We had these shoulder high vines that did, indeed take over the ramp and the yard. I was out of the house again the last day of September, and they were starting to wilt. Last Saturday my son and I delivered a big orange beauty to several friends. I cut a few for us... and I have a couple more I would like to get to others... We have had a little frost since these pictures were snapped, My son informs me I was a week too late because the vines were even bigger earlier..  I love this crazy patch... but I think about how my crazy yard (with the moss growing on the house due to all the foliage) compares to the lovely arrangements on straw bales I see everywhere...  Not a lot of comparison except both have pumpkins! Oh, well. This is me.


A couple remain on the frost-nipped, taupe vines. Mom has been following their development carefully. She was planning next year's garden. I think I should set out one of these again to see what happens. My son suggested putting the pumpkins all over the yard and not having to mow! What a chip off the old block!

So this is charlie Brown reporting in from The Great Pumpkin Patch!                                                                                    

2 comments:

Miss Merry said...

I love your homegrown pumpkin patch! You should ask your friends to donate their gourds after the season, too. They love to reseed, too.

RachelD said...

I'm kinda with HIM!! What a lovely, lush "Volunteer" pumpkin patch!! Things will do what they will do, and pumpkins persevere,

Glad your Mom is planning and looking forward so eagerly---that's a lovely thing to see. Of course, she's planning work for YOU, as most Moms tend to do (both my parents were fond of presenting a plan full-blown, except for the doing, and considered it "their" project, even if just a little diagram of a two-acre plot planned in ten minutes over coffee).

"Here's what I want you to do for me," would be the first words of greeting, and could entail a quick trip to the Post Office, or a three-months project with backhoes and tarps. Even after we moved so many hundreds of miles away, little projects mostly consisted of lots of trips around town finding three dozen of a special X and sending it to them to give to their friends.

I love the simple neat serenity of your house.

r

And i still run the phrase "in silken obedience to the wind," through my head in quiet delight now and then. Your gift for words is a thing of beauty.