pumpkins!

We'll consider this a lesson learned...although I'm not quite sure what that lesson is.

Since Rodney and I love carving pumpkins around Halloween, and I enjoy decorating with pumpkins in the fall, we decided to try our hand at growing some pumpkins this year. We figured if they didn't grow or turned out awful, we were only out a few bucks for seeds. We planted 3 types of pumpkins in the in-laws' garden: small pumpkins used for decorating, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, and, well, huge pumpkins. I don't know the technical terms.

Since they were on the farm, we didn't see much of them, and only got occassional updates from R's parents. Then, a few weeks ago, while we were at a football game, R's dad decided he was ready to clear the garden and picked our orange beauties. I was a little disappointed since I wanted some pictures of that, but oh well.

We finally got around to bringing them home today. Several of them had large rotten spots already, but we were able to salvage a few. Actually, the big ones that we brought home have small bad places on them, but I'll just use those for decorating outside and we'll buy new ones to carve.

Overall, it was pretty neat to grow our own pumpkins and we'll definitely do it again next year. We will also do more research next time, because this year we just threw some seeds into the ground and left them alone. So I suppose the lesson learned here is...a little research and planning go a long way. Otherwise, just wing it and see what happens! The worst you'll get is a few rotten pumpkins.

(by the way, that is dirt on the pumpkins in the picture, not rotten spots. I haven't had a chance to clean them up yet.)