my great pumpkin (august break)

I want to tell you about the pumpkin plant which our neighbor bequeathed to us this past Spring … 

How we planted it in the bed by the patio where nothing seems to grow ... or rather, grows but is immediately eaten by roving bands of marauding rabbits … so we put a cage around it – the plant, not a rabbit – until it billowed out through the wire squares and then with breath held we released it to the wilds (which is to say, our backyard with ground squirrels, voles, robins, grackles, foxes, hawks and of course, those pesky but impossibly cute rabbits.)

Then we left on vacation.

Fearing to find the worst when we returned because by-the-way we are in a drought here, but of course the plant being a cheeky fellow surprised us by its vim and vigor, 

 

 

quadrupling in size and sporting a jaunty wreath of buds and one nascent pumpkin gourd.

There are lots of things The Husband told me about male and female flowers and how one could manually pollinate them (which seems rather forward, wouldn’t you say?)  but we chose to let the plant decide how things would go. Each day (another without rain but with incredible heat) it grows ...

 

and grows ...

and now Great Pumpkin you rest like a Great Sow with belly upon the patio for all to behold with awe and admiration.

But what I drawn to talk about is this: that when we plant seeds, the only certainty is our hope for how things might turn out. So we attend to them with a mixture of anticipation, trust (in them to grow and in our ability to care) and love.

We then marvel at the determination of Life – pumpkins, our children, ourselves -  to persist even in the harshest conditions.  Survival for a pumpkin plant and perhaps ourselves depending upon long, reaching vines, multiple buds, multiple prospects, and one faithful water bearer showing up as best he or she can. 

And the story - which is really about audacity and growth - continue to write itself ...