Pumpkins Past
Yes, I know, they grow so fast
It started more than a decade ago, but I don’t know exactly when. I do know that pumpkin vines fill the background of many back-to-school photos taken when my kids were still the age we took those. In some, the vines totally cover the pavement in the backyard. Other years there is only a straggly stem in the frame. One year there were none at all.
I also can’t quite remember how it started. But I love to decorate for fall. I drag out storage containers full of long-accumulated decor each September, on a date determined by the chill in the air, but never before September 15.
Those bins are filled with mostly store-bought stuff, but there are a few handmade ones. I have a construction paper spider that one of the kids made in school. Her teacher helped her trace her little hands and cut them out. The tracings were overlapped, palms in, fingers out, and glued together. Affixed with googly eyes, and attached to splintery black yarn, I hang it up every Halloween. Maybe the year the spider was cut was the same year those hands helped me with the first pumpkin patch smash? Maybe not.
All I know was that one year, some day after Thanksgiving but before December 1, we unintentionally planted our first gourds. Somehow, we got the idea that our decaying Jack O’ Lanterns and mini pumpkins should be…
