Pumpkin Picking Time

Isn't it such a happy Fall?  The weather has been beautiful.  We have had much more rain than usual, so my garden has been so happy and harvesting has been fun.  The leaves are changing and there is that fun, Fall feeling in the air.  The kids had their school Fall Festival, and, you know, that has the word Fall in it.  It even smells like Fall!  I love it.  That being said, we are so busy with school, more so this year than any other year, and so we are hardly getting out to enjoy this new, fun season.  And I certainly don't have any pictures of us doing anything fun.  Except picking pumpkins yesterday.

We grew 20 pumpkins this year!  Grant brought home a pumpkin start from preschool in the Spring, and that thing went absolutely crazy.  It could have been the early start it got, or the obscene amounts of rain we received this summer, or the Miracle Grow Steroids I sprayed on (but only once, so I doubt that is it...), but our pumpkins grew so much bigger this year.

 That pumpkin is a little too heavy for Grant, I think.

 But not for Ryan!

 Oh ya!

Avery opted for a small one.

I love growing pumpkins.  They are my babies of my garden.  I search for them, and count them and love them, all summer long.  I'm not really sure why they are the most fun for me.  Maybe my ancestors from long ago were pumpkin farmers.  Or pumpkin pie makers.  Maybe it is all the love that we gave them that caused them to grow so big this year!  It isn't the Miracle Grow, after all!

And here they are, next to my corn stalks from my garden.  These decorations came at a price, though.  Our corn on the cob brought our rat friends back.  This does not make me happy.  They are fearless!  They know that I am powerless to their destructive/reproducing capabilities.  So they sit on the corn cob (still on the corn stalk, by the way), eating away, not at all caring that I am walking right up to them, getting ready to throw my sprinkler at their heads.  But I missed.  Apparently nervousness does not help my aim, even from only two feet away.  Needless to say, we will not be planting corn on the cob next year.