Diana McCaulay

On Thursday, we noticed the leaves of the pumpkin vine begin to wilt. 

"It's been cut," my husband said.

"Nonsense!  It's just doing its wilting thing; it's telling us the pumpkin is ready to be reaped."

Today we discovered the vine had been cut.  A mystery.  Had it been cut by the same neighbour who told us about the pumpkin?  Or did the vine originate with a different neighbour, who having not been blessed with a pumpkin, nurtured anti pumpkin feeling?  We retrieved the pumpkin from its aerial nest.  We stood looking at it.

"Doesn't look like a Jamaican pumpkin," I said.   There was a photo of a prize Jamaican pumpkin in the papers this morning - oval and smooth, weighing 37 lbs.  Our pumpkin looked like a giant version of those decorative gourds Americans have at Halloweeen or Thanksgiving, am not sure which.  Perhaps a migrating bird had brought us a foreign pumpkin?  Perhaps even an invasive pumpkin?

We sought advice as to whether or not the pumpkin would continue to ripen if cut off from its nutrition.  No, was the consensus.  The pumpkin has already given its all.  Still, I refused to bring it inside; left it in the sun.  After all, bananas ripen after they are picked... perhaps the pumpkin would do the same.

"Suppose it never ripens?" said my husband.

"Then we look for recipes for green pumpkin on the Internet," I said.  "We have a pumpkin party.  We offer prizes for the most innovative ideas for ways to use a green pumpkin.  We paint it and call it garden art."     

My husband looked panicked.  I could see he was envisaging six months of green pumpkin fritters.  "Would you be happy with a picture? he said.

So here it is - the aerial pumpkin, brought low.  Along with the other abundance of my garden...