Pumpkin Horrors

Oregon farmer wins Half Moon Bay pumpkin contest Danika Starr, 9, sits with her father's winning pumpkin at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Weigh-off contest in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Monday, Oct. 8, 2012. The pumpkin weighed 1,775 pounds, making it a new California record. Starr wins six dollars for each pound, which equals $10,650.

It's a horror. A horror. The only good thing to be said is that it has been chopped off its feeding tube and can no longer consume small house pets. I know about this. I know it well from the time when I too raised, ignorant of the horror, my own giant pumpkin back in another time in a world well lost.....

Click Me and Grow Big

The Pumpkin that Ate My Backyard

It began as a $1.49 seedling at Home Depot which I bought for my step-son to plant.

He planted it, as heedless 9-year-old boys will, in an obscure corner of a sandy bed under some ice-plants. It seemed to me at the time that the pumpkin was going to have a short and shady life.

But then, after about a month, it seemed to suddely clamber across my terrace. Then it strangled the corn plants. That gave it HUNGER and it ate the chair. When it approached the deck it lunged, fell back and sprouted this "fruit" of the vine.

Now the pumpkin is trying to invade my neighbor`s yard. Last night I heard them outside calling plaintively for their new puppy to come back in, "Sloopy! Little Sloopy! Sloopy, come!"

But answer came there none.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at October 10, 2012 4:50 PM