I have been harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and herbs from my garden for a while, but it is now time for my favorite fall harvest, PUMPKINS! I planted four plants, each one a different variety, and I got four pumpkins. It seems to be normal for me to get just one pumpkin per plant, however I remember getting a whole bunch of pumpkins when we planted them as kids. In third grade our teacher saved the seeds from pumpkins we carved in class at Halloween. In the spring, before school was over, we planted our seeds in little milk cartons. I don’t know how many seeds we planted, but my sister and I took our new little pumpkin plants home and put them in the garden. Dad always had a big vegetable garden in the backyard. He helped us put in the pumpkin plants leaving lots of room so they could spread. Pumkins need a lot of space. I loved watching those tiny plants turn into monster vines that covered at least half of the garden. My sister and I were so excited about all the potential pumpkins we were going to have, but my Dad "put the kibosh” on our plans. He didn’t think we would get any. For some reason he told us that he wasn’t sure if the flowers would get pollinated. He explained that pumpkin plants have two kinds of flowers. The female flowers have a little potential pumpkin at their base and “pistils” in the middle of the flower. The male flowers have pollen covered “stamen” instead of pistils. It is the job of the bees to carry the pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers. Dad wasn’t sure if there was enough bee action in our garden to result in actual pumpkins. This discussion was as close as we ever got to any real explanation of the “birds and the bees” from my parents. We were fascinated. ![]() Determined to get our pumpkins we decided to take things into our own hands and do the work of the bees. Armed with small paint brushes we headed out to the garden. We covered every inch of the pumpkin patch, carefully transferring pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers. Dad wasn’t sure if this would work, but apparently it did because we got a bunch of pumpkins. Once we started seeing the pumpkins emerge, we knew we had to protect them from the kid next door. There were no fences dividing yards in the town where I grew up. Everyone’s back yard was open to all the neighbors. On one side of the back yard we had an apple tree. It’s branches hung over the yard next door. The boy who lived there informed us that any apples on the branches that hung over “his property” were his. We believed him. We didn’t want our pumpkins to be subject to this same backyard rule. Every day we went out to the garden and moved the vines that had started to creep towards the property line. We diligently monitored our plants so that the kid next door could not claim any of our pumpkins as his. ![]() The pumpkins got bigger and bigger. Then one day, tragedy struck. Our pumpkins were stolen. Our back yard was open to an alley and someone had come along and cut all of our pumpkins off the vines and tried to haul them away. They were obviously on foot, however, because we found quite a few of them scattered in the alley. They were so big and heavy and there were so many of them that the thieves could not take them all. Still we were devastated. They hadn’t turned completely orange yet and we were afraid that all of our hard work of planting and pollenating and carefully monitoring their growth had gone for naught. Dad assured us that even though they wouldn’t grow any more, they would still turn orange. We hauled them inside for protection, and sure enough, we did have quite a few nice big orange pumpkins that we grew ourselves for Halloween. This pumpkin experience had a profound effect on me. It was a lesson in horticulture and Botany that has served me through many seasons of planting my own garden. It was a lesson in patience and tenacity in the face of the many dangers that people who have open back yards must face, that transferred over into my ability to meet the challenges of life as an adult. And it was a lesson in love, the love of nature and the love of my Dad who was probably chuckling to himself as he watched his twin daughters practicing their lesson about the birds and the bees in our backyard garden.
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Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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