Day 94, August 20, 2010

There it is! It appears to me to be fluorescent orange, like a maritime safety marker. A welcome apparition glinting in a sea of fading green.

Black-green stem tight to the vine, an umbilical cord, of sorts. This baby's been growing outside, on mother earth, all summer. She's been basking in rain and haze. Thriving in dousings and dry spells. Giant leaves are still guarding her from the late August sun, and I cannot wait to cut the cord.

It's a symbolic harvest. Honestly , it's all about wanting to be the first in Noank to put out a pumpkin.

I cut the pumpkin free. It's unceremonious, but it feels good to this hunter- gatherer to be gathering a new crop in the garden. We tried our first cantaloupe yesterday, and today I will leave our second for Farmer Brown and his wife. Nevertheless, I am certain that I'll be bitching about harvesting pumpkins, before long.

For the first time, I am able to see evidence of her brothers and sisters in the pumpkin patch. Most of the young pumpkins are military green, growing rapidly. I believe that as the leaves become brittle, the gourds grow faster. There are a variety of sizes, and since I am growing "Jack-o-lantern" and "Howell" cultivers, there will be a

wonderful variety of sizes and shapes. I have a feeling we're about to have a pumpkin boom, as the entire patch is about 1/8 of an acre. The vines have run into, and trampled some of the cosmos and bean plants, and on the other side, they have infiltrated the corn rows.

My red-handled garden shears cut through the stem easily. It's a wet stem, looks like a unique fiber. It'll dry quickly, and like human cord, it should eventually fall off. I inspect the pumkin, and it looks pretty good for being field-grown. No pesticides. No fertilizer. A 30-pounder... A Great Pumpkin in August? Good Grief!