With days and nights getting cooler and bins of clearly superior pumpkins appearing all over town, I find myself forced to acknowledge that my pumpkins will likely not be growing any larger. They remain small, but sincere. And my prize pumpkin, the first to make its appearance back in those heady days of mid-summer, has turned a bright shade of orange. The time has come. Time for the first pumpkin harvest of 2010. The first pumpkin to leave the patch. The first pumpkin to sit on the veranda, to watch the falling leaves, to feel the increasingly frosty temperatures and wait for its time to shine.
The first pumpkin of 2010 never grew much larger than a cantaloupe. But no matter. It's large enough to carve. And certainly an improvement over last year's crop yield of zero pumpkins. And there are more. I've counted seven more pumpkins, at varying stages of maturity. Equally small. But equally carve-able. If they all survive, they'll form a happy little group come Halloween. A small but sincere little group.
If the cat doesn't get them first.