Big Big Big!

Bud has been working on a gardening project since this past spring. He has been looking forward to October ALL year!! He germinated his seeds in March. He planted his plants in May. He cross-pollinated his blossoms in July. He watered all summer long. For all of his effort, he was rewarded with this garden plot...

and this Ginormous Trophy Pumpkin to take to the Pumpkin Festival for entry into the contest.

Here Pops is helping Bud to "cut the cord" to get it off the vine for taking to the garden shop.

As you can see, it is a bit on the large side. Since Pops is gone all this week, they removed the pumpkin this past Sunday and got it ready to take in for weighing before he left so that I wouldn't have to fuss with this enormity of a task!

And it is true that if you stick your tongue out while working, it will be a bit easier...

We had the scale outside and Pops stepped on without the pumpkin and again with the pumpkin and this monster weighs in the vicinity of... NO, WAIT! I won't tell. I want you to GUESS!!! Leave a comment for Bud and guess the weight of the pumpkin. (And no fair, Geemah - don't guess! I already told you its weight!!) So, leave him a comment, he will love to know what you think his pumpkin looks like it weighs!! I'll give you a clue... it is MORE THAN, uh, 20 pounds - the max a pregnant lady is told she should lift!! :)

He was pretty proud of his big orange monster and couldn't wait to get it entered in for the scheduled October 17th contest!

Being the sweet, kind and generous brother that he is, he happily let his sisters pick any of the other pumpkins in the patch to take as their own. (So long as they would hurry - he was ready to GO!) There were a few other good sized ones that were a nice dark orange color, but they had begun to rot, so they weren't exactly good candidates!

The girls wandered through the patch looking for the one that they would like to call their own.

Branch picked a nice round yellow one. It suited her well, I suppose. She could do it herself and it was shiny with a nice big leaf.

Blossom picked the smallest one that she could find! It has a small body, stem, leaves and even a tiny curly-que! Perfect for her!! I would have expected nothing different!

They all climbed in the van and headed off to the garden shop that is sponsoring the pumpkin contest to enter their precious cargo. (I stayed home and propped my feet up!)

It wasn't too much longer before the van pulled back in the driveway and these somber faces came walking into the house. "They were closed." Oh, my... Pops was scheduled to leave Sunday night. Pumpkin contest is the following Saturday morning. Pops' return flight is scheduled to land an hour or so from home on Saturday at 11:46 PM. The plan was not for him to be around for the pumpkin festival at all!

So, He put the pumpkins in the back of my Tahoe and said, "Someone will help you get that thing out of there for these kids." I hoped that he was right.

We were able to take the pumpkins to the garden shop on Tuesday afternoon. I told them the situation and they took one look at me and implied that I had my own pumpkin to be carrying around and that NO, I really shouldn't be trying to carry around a "Giant Pumpkin" - no matter what its weight (have any guesses, yet?!). So, the kind folks brought out a cart and lowered he pumpkin onto the cart and wheeled it inside. The pumpkins were all numbered, labeled and entered into the contest for this weekend.

I received a call from the garden shop this afternoon... The pumpkin festival has been postponed until October 24th due to the weather that we are having and expecting to have on Saturday (the rain has arrived!). Pumpkins begin to lose a bit of weight as they are off the vine... so, unfortunately, Bud has lost 2 weeks of growing time that other folks will have for their giant pumpkins. Bummer. I hope that it won't lose much weight! Any idea on how much weight they lose a day when they are big like this?? Oh, well... he is still excited, as now he can go to the pumpkin festival with Pops, too!