Fall continues to fight its way into central Washington this week. Right now it’s losing the battle as we are set to bear another few days in the nineties. My garden wants to be done for the season and I want to be done with it. Currently I am in the midst of harvesting nearly all the vegetables. My freezer is darn near overflowing and I’m running out of jars for canning. (Consider the fact I started with nearly three hundred jars this year.)
In a few weeks the weather will change, I will be done with work for my maternity leave, and great foods will be stored everywhere. I believe I am going to gain all my ‘baby fat’ after my dear daughter arrives, as then I may have a chance to sit still.
This weekend I went out into the garden and took a few shots of the pumpkin patch. As I was snooping under the giant green leaves I decided next year I want more pumpkins. This year I will end up with twenty five to fifty pumpkins, ranging from grapefruit sized pie pumpkins to beach ball equivalent carving pumpkins. In past years I’ve always bought five or six from the store each year. So as you can see, I really don’t need more pumpkins, I just want them solely for bragging rights.
Taking pictures of pumpkin patches is an unrewarding task when the good stuff is hiding under the leaves.
The pumpkins are not all crayon orange, as you can see.
Here are my favorite. The ones with the pretty shape that will bake into pies, breads, cookies and if I can ever figure out how to infuse vodka with pumpkin…well, then that too!
And then we have cherry tomatoes. Somehow I ended up planting around twenty five cherry tomato plants when I believed they were romas. Whoops.
The pepper plants are finally growing tons of hot little peppers, which I am stringing all around the kitchen.
Here we have the lawn pumpkin. Somehow a seed was dropped on my lawn and the plant took off great, although it began much later in the season than the rest of the pumpkins. I decided to let it go and so far I have one respectable pumpkin floating off of it. Not sure if it will mature before a deep freeze comes our way, but kudos to the lawn pumpkin for surviving!
The Pilver 
Wow. Just load up on some guns and you’re ready for the apocalypse. Better safe than sorry.
Can’t wait to see what kind of Jack-o-Lanterns are produced in the Pilver household. And I really like that survivor punkin. I like his style.
Yeah, me too. We also have a producing tomato plant in the compost, but I don’t wanna eat out of the compost pile. It’s way too close to the chicken poo.
Very nice! I can’t wait until I can have my own garden, successfully put in and harvested!
I’m just glad there is a part of the Country that has enough rain to grow pumpkins–please send them to Texas–we will be in short supply this year I’m sure.
Actually, there is not nearly enough rain here to grow hardly anything. Every day we drain our well in order to water the garden. It hasn’t really rained at all since June.
I’m jealous of our pumpkin patch. I don’t have the room or the patience to do one of my own but yours looks pretty spiffy! And I’m with Deej, can’t wait to see what kind of jack o’lanterns come out of those punkins!