Pumpkins galore !

I thought of waiting till Halloween before I publish this post. Then one thing let to another. I apologize for not writing this earlier. But here we are.

I attended a wedding recently where the bride and the groom could not stop crying for almost 90% of the ceremony. I thought of squeezing out a couple of tears myself in solidarity with the bride and groom, but try as I might I could not cry. For that matter I did not cry at my own wedding and neither did my husband. 

A very long time ago I made a promise to myself to never cry in public. Life has been challenging but I try to hold on to the few promises I made even when the going gets tough. For some reason I associate tears with loss, funerals, young children and very old women. The only time I remember my stoic and tough-as- nails grandfather crying was when my grandmother passed away. They were married for over 50 years and he was in his late 80's when she passed. When we got the call from the hospital early one morning - I remember him bowing his head and a single tear drop rolled down his cheek. To me that was profound. We were all crying but his one tear has a meaning that I can not even begin to describe. To the 23 year old me him crying is equivalent to the sun rising in the west and setting in the eat.

Getting back on the subject of pumpkins - 

This year has been good for pumpkins for we had a lot of rain. The pumpkin harvest almost made us run out of space in garage. 

And there is more...

And more ....

And to make space I lined them up like this ... :-).

This year I was able to give away a lot of pumpkins and squashes to friends and family. My husband begged me to plant less next year as he ran out of friends to give pumpkins to. What can I say, it is good ground cover and reduces weeds from overtaking my yard. 

I plant about 5-6 seeds per hole and about 2-3 feet apart. This year half of my bush beans/ pumpkin/ squash seedlings were attacked by slugs when they were at the 2-3 leaf stage. So the extra planting definitely helped. However it is ideal to plant no more than 2-3 seeds per hole. 

I guess I will have to find a way to use these pumpkins and squashes. Good thing that it will keep for 6 months or so and they freeze well too. More on this in another post.