Our Plentiful Harvest

For those of you reading this that know me well, you probably know that I've pretty much had a lifetime goal of growing pumpkins.

I remember asking my mom and dad (mostly my dad) each year if this was the year that I would get to plant pumpkins in the backyard. Each year, the answer remained the same..."NO!" I even presented it in different ways each year, hoping my persuasive powers would do the trick. They (again, mostly dad) never wavered though, he always stuck with the same answer. Each year, when Halloween was over, I used to sneak back to the big field in the back of our house and throw my pumpkin down as hard as I could in hopes that it would break open, the seeds would spread and the next year, there would be "magical" pumpkin plants that popped up. That didn't even work.

Well, now that I'm married, and have my own backyard, I brought up the idea to Dave this year. He jumped right on board. (Just another reason I love him!) So, let me set this up for you...we went to the friendly Menards store back in June and bought three kinds of pumpkin seeds. We bought seeds to grown mini pumpkins (you know, like the gourd kind), seeds to grow regular sized pumpkins and seeds to grow giant jack-o-lanterns.

Dave went out back in early July to plant our harvest. We carefully dug up the grass and he popped in the seeds. He figured that it was a good idea to plant all three packets because they certainly wouldn't all grow. Much to our amazement, in just a few short weeks, we had a gazillion and a half pumpkin plants growing and taking over our backyard.

We tended our pumpkins with love and care all summer long. We watered, fertilized, talked to and visited them each day. They grew and grew and grew. They were green and lovely. We were proud pumpkin growers.

One problem--the leaves were bountiful, the fruit was not. We soon began to worry because there weren't to many actual pumpkins growing on the vines. We had a couple, but nothing to write home about. It seemed the mini-pumpkins were doing the best, but how were we ever going to carve those?!?!?!?

Well-our plentiful harvest turned out to be two tiny pumpkins (they were full grown, but the mini gourd kind!) My first year of growing pumpkins, and we get two small pumpkins. Oh well, at least I got to grow pumpkins. Maybe next year's harvest will be more plentiful.