from the backyard

We moved our garden to the backyard a this year and missed the prime planting times for most vegetables, so we decided to fill our garden with pumpkins instead. A nice change since pumpkins are just so rewarding to grow. They get HUGE! You can see progress nearly every day, which the kids loved. We nursed three pumpkin vines through the hottest and driest summer this town has seen in many years.



In the end, we were able to save five pumpkins from being eaten by our ravenous squirrels. Actually that is not true. We raised five pristine pumpkins in the backyard, (they were the only ones hidden enough in the vines to escape the hungry squirrels) only to have them eaten almost immediately by the squirrels once we placed them on the front porch in plain sight. We never even carved them since the squirrels basically did it for us.

I must say, though, we did enjoy the show. We watched many times each day the squirrels coming right up to the front door for a snack. Our favorite was a tiny baby squirrel gnawing on one of the gourds. Oh, she was a cutie!