Last year in late November my husband said... "What's this pumpkin out here [back porch]; is it something you're saving?" Just then he lifted it from the table and the rotten guts spilled out. I'd put it out there a month before and it rotted. He scooped the mess between a few pieces of card board and threw it into the area of the yard where we chop wood and let it age.
The soil is pretty good in the mostly unused corner of the yard since so many logs lie there to dry out.
This summer when I was hanging the laundry I noticed a long, viney plant wending it's way between the fence posts toward the driveway. Looking over the fence, I saw that it was a squash variety of some kind. I figured it would just die, it looked weak and spindly.
On through the summer it grew, spreading in several directions and then producing yellow flowers. I wasn't sure what it was. Soon the flowers disappeared and little green orbs came out. My husband shouted to me one day that he thought we had watermelons. Hmm I thought, little late in the season for those to be just budding.
On it grew. We've had A LOT of rain, so I've been hanging the laundry INDOORS - this week I visited the laundry line and low and behold, PUMPKINS... 5 or 6 of them. They are mostly turning orange now though they are small. I saw a squirrel scratching at one.
I called my youngest son outside, took some photos of the cute little babies on the vine and let him have a go at them with the garden loppers. We snipped off three and decided to see if the others would still grow some more.
Aren't they cute? The coolest thing about it was that I wasn't even TRYING to grow them - LOVE IT. I guess there are good things about pumpkin goo being too much of a mess to make it all the way to the compost bin!
Happy Halloween
