Mr. Mugwort Pumpkin

We decided that we better carve our pumpkin tonight. Tomorrow will be pretty busy for us. So I asked him to draw me a face to carve. This is what he drew.

Here he is, a mugwort pumpkin.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins, Eureka!

As I bought the pumpkin in, the lady was like, "Oh no, what's wrong?" I was like, "Well Matthew touched the stem and it's now inside the pumpkin with water." She was so impressed with the strangeness of the pumpkin, she cut it open while I was there and I had to take a photo. Isn't it gross? But you can actually tell there is still an 1/2" of good flesh all around the outside. It literally is rotting from the inside out, not the normal way, outside in.

So for an extra 3 dollars, we got 3 pumpkins! A real sigh moment, turned into an happy ending.

Sigh

I had to go to the garden store to buy my Mom some mums, so I decided to buy a really cool Galeux d'Eysines pumpkin too. I got it home proudly (while my husband was telling me I pick the ugliest pumpkins). A little later, I noticed Matthew playing with the stem while I was on the phone. It seemed loose. I checked it out after I got off the phone and it came right off. The inside of the pumpkin is totally moldy green and it has water in it because you can hear it sloshing now. Sigh...

What we've been doing so far this week

I've been hearing that there is a pumpkin shortage this year. To be on the safe side, Matthew and I stocked up.

We've decorated for Halloween.



We've been using up the last of the delicious apples.


Fresh apple cake.

Rosy applesauce, cinnamon applesauce, and apple cheddar soup. We'll be sad to see the last of the apples go...but to tell you the truth, I'm getting tired of applesauce.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 23

This is the last week of show and tell on kinderGARDEN Thursdays. Next Thursday is the judging of the final post, which is to be the best of the last 23 weeks. Ohhhh, the pressure to write up a really good post! (It talks about it in this weeks The Inadvertent Farmer.) But we aren't there yet, so let's see what Matthew and I did this week.

I learned to can last weekend! My relative, Lorri and I made applesauce, apple butter, and apple jelly. Yum! We used 3 bags of apples and I left a fourth bag for her mom. Then I visited my Auntie, who wanted the last bag for crockpot applesauce. Since the week before I had picked everything you could get from the ground, up I had to go. Dad and Matthew raised me way up in the air, in the bucket of the loader tractor, to pick another 2 bags. That's the last of the apples I can reach for the fall. 8 bags total. Since Monday, I've made crockpot apple butter and apple sauce so that we can save our canned goodies till deep in the winter.

I checked on the garden at Dad's house. We have turnips going to town. The pumpkin vines look good, but we won't get any pumpkins this year. Sigh.

We noticed Dad has a tomato bush covered in 17 pear tomatoes finally! The Brandywine even has a few. I was so disappointed that mine own didn't have any, especially since the 2nd tomato rotted on the vine.


But our purple green beans keep going strong.

And then I noticed them next to the beans. 2 Cream Sausage babies.

And next to them, 3 Black Pineapple babies! Maybe we might have a handful of tomatoes before frost after all. I'm overjoyed!

The weather has been so fall like lately that yesterday Matthew and I went to the local nursery and looked at mums for the front porch and pumpkins. Truly, I think he wanted one of very color (and I did too), but for now we brought home his favorite. He is impatient to get this little guy turned into a jack-o-lantern. But he'll have to wait a bit. After all, it's only September...

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 20

I can basically sum up this week in 3 words. Water, wait, plant.

We watered alot with cooler water. The rain filled it completely up with rainwater, yea!

The waiting. Waiting for our 2 tomatoes to grow. They are, slowly.

2nd tomato growing, slowly.

We finally have a pumpkin! I name it Prince Charming and hope it grows to adulthood. Grow fast little guy.

My Dad's HUGE brandywine tomato plant that looks awesome, has tons of blooms, and never produces a single tomato. What's with this family's tomatoes?!?

I didn't get pictures of Matthew planting turnips in with the pumpkin vines, but in the upper right triangle is where he is planted turnips. We are hoping we get a very good turnip crop.


Over at The Inadvertent Farmer, she has another guest , Theresa Loe, that talks about the Center Street Elementary's school garden. In the article Theresa mentions The Edible Schoolyard, which is at the Martin Luther King Junior Middle School. Mom introduced me to The Edible Schoolyard blog over the summer and Wow! what an awesome program. I wish that the students in our area had a chance to participate in learning like that. I think that it's wonderful that there more school's planting gardens and incorporating other elements that make it work at their school. At Center Street they have bins for children to scrap different foods into. The compostable stuff goes to the garden. Great stuff!

The pumpkin patch

This was the first time any of us had been to a pumpkin patch. We were amazed by all the stuff to do and see and all the people! There was a steady stream of them coming and going the entire time we were there. We had a blast. Enjoy the event with us from the beginning to the end.

Matthew was totally pumped. He kept screaming, "The park!!!" and bouncing.

This is the gourd launcher.

Here's the pumpkin launcher.

They had a tricycle race course, but unfortunately, Matthew didn't have long enough legs for the pedals.

He managed to create quite a pile up.

According to the pumpkin chart, Matthew is 3 ft. tall now.

The delight of Matthew's day was the slides. They did look pretty fun. Phil went down with him the first time. I didn't get a picture because a tall guy camped out in front of me right as they started down. At one point Matthew got so excited he ran back up to the top, hopped in front of the first kid in line and sailed down again. That's when we realized he needed me to help him with his place in line.

He really enjoyed running on the big round bales that periodically had "DO NOT CLIMB" spray painted on them.

And he never fell off.

Bouncing on them was great fun too. Best park ever.

They had many different boards up for photos. I liked the cat best.

The morning before Matthew had woke up and said, "What was that noise?" I said, "I didn't hear anything." He ripped open the curtains by his bed and said, "Where's the billy goats?" I said, "Billy goats? Do you think we have billy goats?" "Yeah..." I guess he heard that term somewhere and dreamed we'd opened a goat ranch. So I guess he finally got to see his billy goats.

Feeding the greedy beast.

We took the shortest hay rack ride in history. (It lasted no more then a minute seriously.) It dropped us off at the pumpkin patch. We told Matthew he could have whatever pumpkin he could pick up. Not this one obviously.

Having trouble finding a little one on this end we went to where all the little ones were.

On the way back we visited the ducks.

I love this ones feathers!

This one is a beautiful color.

While waiting to pay for our pumpkin and leave, Matthew posed for a picture with all the tempting pumpkins. I was surprised to see gourds that looked exactly like hedge apples. In fact, I really believe that were hedge apples. I swear we could make a killing running a pumpkin patch. Hedge apples we could gather for free and sell for a $1 a piece.

Here we are 2 minutes from the pumpkin patch.

And 5 minutes away we are out. It's the end ladies and gentlemen. Hope you had as much fun as we did.