Diana McCaulay

“The neighbours left a message,” said my husband on our return from Seattle, checking our voice mail. Generally, this is not a good sign – such messages usually concern neighbourhood petty crimes called “incidents” in our neck of the woods.

“What, the hose thief again? I said.

“No,” he said.

“The orchid thief?”

“Uh uh…” he said, shaking his head.

“The box lunch dumper?”

“Shh!” he said, holding up a finger. Must be serious, I thought, and stopped going through the bills.

He hung up the phone. “We have a pumpkin,” he said.

“A pumpkin?” I said. “On the doorstep? Did someone donate it?”

“On the roof of the back patio. The neighbours were calling to make sure we knew about it, so we could watch it and make sure it doesn’t get stolen.”

Flashback to farmer ex boyfriend – his sister asks: How do you know when a pumpkin is ready?

Farmer ex boyfriend: When it’s gone.

“Well, that’s novel,” I said. “How’d it get up on the roof?” I envisaged the kind of prank that leads college students to throw toilet paper over trees or laced up running shoes over power lines.

“It’s growing up there,” my husband said.

“Growing? How can it be growing? There’s no dirt up there,” I objected.

“The vine came over the next door fence, apparently.” Aaah. That made sense. Our back patio has a wrought iron roof half covered by a vine of unknown provenance delivered by a passing bird. A pumpkin vine had sneaked over the fence recently and jostled with the old vine on the back patio roof, delivering an intense and welcome shade. I don’t go up there; I have a laissez faire attitude to vines. So this new vine had gestated a pumpkin.

We went to look. At first we didn’t see anything. “It’s been stolen,” said my husband.

“I’m sure it’s there,” I said. These are well worn paths of discourse at my house – he’s Eeyore; I’m Tigger.

We stared upwards at the tangle of vegetation. And there it was – a lumpy, dark green, colossal pumpkin, comfortably nestled in a tangle of dead leaves. We were excited. “Is it ours?” asked my husband. “We didn’t plant the vine.”

“I think so,” I said. We became proprietary. We were gonna defend our pumpkin. “Perhaps when it’s ready, we should share it with the person who planted the vine?”

“Sure,” said my husband. “It’s a big pumpkin. How will we know when to pick it?”

“Beats me,” I said, thinking of the farmer ex boyfriend. “We’ll have to seek advice. And climb up there.” I knew it was going to be on my “to do” list.

A Jamaican homecoming, I thought suddenly. Along with the drive through the Palisadoes wasteland, the navigation of collapsing sewage trenches and ever expanding potholes of Kingston’s streets, the radio droning on about Manatt Phelps and Foolishness, the land had awarded us a gift: a pumpkin – organic, accidental, soaking up the sun. A gift to be shared. One of the banana trees was bearing and there was a good crop of mangoes coming in too. I smiled. The bills could wait. So could the newspapers. I put on shorts and took my tea onto the back patio to commune with the aerial pumpkin.