A year ago my children carved pumpkins on our sidewalk. They didn’t really clean up very well. Can you see where this story is going?
We were surprised in the spring to have little pumpkin plants pop up in our flower garden (you can see our poor flowers struggling to reach the sun between the vines). These are hearty plants. We did nothing to encourage or help them, though we did make efforts to train them back away from the driveway. They survived a complete sprinkler overhaul with serious digging all around them. We have four giant pumpkins, two of which are very orange and gorgeous. The leaves have all suffered from the frost already, but the green pumpkins are still ripening slowly.
One of the things that makes our pumpkins special this year is knowing their provenance. A family friend owns a giant pumpkin patch nearby. They gave us the pumpkins we carved last year, so we know exactly where the pumpkin family comes from. Down the road!
We’ve heard that pumpkins may be scarce this year in some areas, though that isn’t really evident with fields and fields of pumpkins for sale near us. Still we are going to paint our pumpkins this years so we can eat each and every one of them.
We will definitely also toss a few random seeds into the flower bed and see what happens next year.
