Nov 11 2009
Past in Polaroids – October 1978
It’s time to put the gardens to bed in Michigan; sunny, 65-degree days notwithstanding. There was frost on the ground again this morning and the low tonight is predicted to be 28. Leaves are being raked and dragged to the turned soil so that they can spend the winter decomposing for whoever is lucky enough to be planting those gardens in the future.
(Author’s aside: Conference calls make me want to poke a hot stick in through one ear and out the other. I’ve been on calls for 5 hours already today. Just so you know. Also, the one I’m on right now? With a corporate attorney. Ehem.)
Annnyyyyywayyyyyyy, when we first moved to “the country”, I was all of 13 years old. We had chickens. Geese. Steer. Eventually a horse. We also had a garden.
A garden to end all gardens. It was more square footage than the entire lot we’d move from in the suburbs.
Row upon row of tomatoes. Cucumbers. Eggplant. Watermelon and cantaloupe. Squash and corn. Kohlrabi, radishes, carrots. And pumpkins.
Like those pumpkins up there.
Every year we’d plant pumpkins in order to decorate the yard in the appropriate Autumn tableaux. An old buckboard wagon in the middle of the front yard was the centerpiece. A scarecrow perched on the seat. Corn stalks arranged in those clumpy-arrangement things that are supposed to look like tepees (ours always fell over and never, EVER looked like we envisioned them). And pumpkins, overflowing from the back of the wagon…some carved into jack-o-lanterns, others left unscathed.
Artistes. That’s what we were.
We kids (my brother The Golden Child was 11, my sister 7), taking direction from my mother, carted those behemoths in a wheelbarrow and somehow lifted them to the wagon bed. I can’t find a picture of the completed wagon, but I can tell you, it was spectacular!
—- Memories don’t lie, right? —-
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Those pumpkins are huge! What kind of fertilizer did you use?!
Shelly´s last blog ..Snippets
Good old Michigan pumpkins!
Tuli´s last blog ..A couple of too-bright photos
I’m sure it WAS spectacular – - kid memories don’t lie!
Liz J in Central Illinois´s last blog ..Honor Flight
I think your Daddy had some Howard Dill envy. Howard Dill grew gigantic, award-winning pumpkins for many, many years here.
witchypoo´s last blog ..Open Mouth Insert Foot
Hey honey.
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Those pumpkins are huge. And I think the affairs with the hay are called “stooks”, but I might be wrong.
Just catching up after 4 days on the road… glad to see you back
Heck no! I believe you! The only thing that could make them bigger would be YOU being smaller…. say, child size?
They are huge pumpkins – were they any good for eating?
BTW – over here, Halloween is not so big, but you COULD buy Halloween pumpkins – for $24 each – they weren’t racing out of the door…
jeanie´s last blog ..36 weeks – that is still a month to go!!!
that’s some squash! how cool that must have been. all 5 of my pumpkin patches to date have been massive FAILURES.
Green Girl in Wisconsin´s last blog ..before driving miss daisy
Oh I love your past in Polaroids.
Those pumpkins are awesome and even though I live on a postage stamp on a lot in West LA, I think for Thanksgiving, I’m gonna go find a wagon, set it up in my front yard and try to replicate what you describe. It. sounds. spectacular. And of course you were an artiste and you still are.
Love the imagery here. Love. it.
Lee of MWOB´s last blog ..Oil of Olay is the Secret to Beautiful Skin
last year a large pumpkin patch flooded and there’s a great picture of the pumpkins floating. I felt bad for the farmer, but it was spectacular to see.
Nice to see you back. xoxox.
Jenny/Boxer´s last blog ..This and That
HUGE!
I went from growing hundreds of pumpkins each year, to ONE this year. ONE tiny, softball sized pumpkin. I blame global… um, warming?
Humph.
Hyphen Mama´s last blog ..Morsels and Crumbs….