Pumpkins are a Mean Vegtable

A while back my blog friend Heather mentioned that her family grows a couple of pumpkins every year so they don't have to buy them for Halloween. I thought this was a most excellent idea so I stole it.

When we carved our pumpkin last year we saved out about 8 seeds. I dried them on the windowsill a while and then put them away until spring.

When I planted our garden this spring I dropped in a few of the seeds. I think I planted six in total and to my amazement, four actually grew! For the next week or so I had the cutest little pumpkin plants. Then I had some bigger pumpkin plants. By the time we came back from vacation the pumpkins had run amuck. They completely grew over the marigolds totally hiding them from sight, started to choke out the squash and were running vines out into the yard.

Then God intervened.

It's been in the high 90's all week and not a rain drop in sight. When I went out to pull some weeds tonight it was obvious that one of the pumpkin vines had perished from heat exhaustion and lack of water.

Oops.

So I pulled it out.

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation I highly recommend that you wear gloves. Did you know that pumpkins have thorns? And prickers? And they are not widely spaced apart like rose. Oh no, they are packed in tight. And since I was not wearing gloves I felt the fury of the pumpkins wrath.

Thirsty pumpkins are mean pumpkins. After all, this is the pumpkin that the seeds came from.



And just so you know that I am not a total pumpkin hater I am adding on a picture of a very cute and sweet pumpkin. This one has no thorns and is very cute indeed.