Benign neglect?
Or is
it ”Give it an inch and it’ll take a mile?
I planted a
pumpkin seed last spring. It was an
effort to cut down on yard work. It
covers up a lot of ground and keeps weeds at bay. Bottom line: less mowing.
I must have
planted a pumpkin somewhere in the past, but I don’t remember
specifically. I knew that a pumpkin vine
would spread faster than bindweed and prevent weed growth. Unlike bindweed, it will be gone when it
freezes.
Where did I get
that idea if I hadn’t planted a pumpkin in the past? Maybe from Nathaniel Hawthorne.
From The Scarlet
Letter:
“But the proprietor appeared already to have
relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the
Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the
native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight;
and a pumpkin vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening
space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the
hall-window; as if to warn the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold
was as rich an ornament as New England earth would offer him.”
My pumpkin vine has taken over much of the
strawberry patch.
It’s currently attempting a coup of the roses.
If it defeats the roses, I won’t grieve. Roses are pretty, but caring for them is like trying to help a wild animal. Weeding or trimming results in lots of painful pricks and snags, the reward for caring.
I inherited the roses from a previous
owner. There were nearly twenty. I’m down to a dozen or so. An attempt to move three of the biggest
bushes to the front of the house resulted in one fatality and two
never-blooms. Obviously, I’m not a rose
person.
The pumpkin has invaded the mint patch,
but is doomed to lose that war. I have
prevented it from covering up the cantaloupe vine.
Pumpkin trivia: The comic strips used to include one called “Some
Punkins.” A World War II bomber was
named “Some Punkins”, maybe after the comic strip.
At the junction of Colorado State Highways
71 and 94 lies a settlement called Punkin Center. Farm broadcaster / pilot Evan Slack liked to
point out that the place was listed as “Pumpkin Junction” on air charts (maps).
As October approaches, the pumpkin will get
its share of the limelight. Soon I will
be able to sing, “Hey there Country Bumpkin, How’s the frost out on the
pumpkin?”
Harvest will take a strong back
(volunteers wanted). Want a huge jack-o-lantern? Roasted pumpkin seeds? Maybe homemade pie filling? Apply in person at the patch.
Then there will be all those vines to
dispose of, the tradeoff for not having to mow all summer.
It will be okay if Mother Nature doesn’t
send us a killing frost for a while.
