06-07-2023, 08:50 AM
So, my backyard is a pumpkin patch. Bonus picture at the end.
This
is a pumpkin plant growing in the dirt that I took from the former allium bed-cum-vole feeding trough and used to fill in low spots in the clover, decorative strawberries, parsley-piert, and who knows whatever else has taken over the lawn. In this case it's filling in a runnel from the overflow of one of the water barrels.
An observant person may think, "That doesn't seem to make sense. Looking at the slope, the water should be flowing to the right," and that person would be correct. The runnel started as a vole tunnel that Grrl spent a season digging up trying to find what smelled so intriguing.
But why is a pumpkin growing in the soil from the allium bed? Because last November I grabbed the pumpkins the neighbors didn't want by their front door anymore, chopped them up (the pumpkins, not the neighbors), and buried them in my raised beds. Do you know how much fertilizer is used to grow pumpkins commercially? Why let all that go to the landfill?
In the opposite corner we have:
This soil was used to try to create a slope instead of a sudden drop. Only about a foot, but a pain to mow. Okay, two volunteer pumpkin plants growing in soil that had pumpkins seeds. Doesn't make it a patch. Oh, but there's more. There is also:
This is in the middle of the yard, a good fifty feet from either of the other two. (My backyard is long but narrow. Maybe forty feet from the back door to the back fence.) And notice what isn't there? Loose soil. The plant is just growing in the middle of the yard. My backyard is a pumpkin patch.
Promised bonus picture: Stalking
Taken at my aunt's.
This
is a pumpkin plant growing in the dirt that I took from the former allium bed-cum-vole feeding trough and used to fill in low spots in the clover, decorative strawberries, parsley-piert, and who knows whatever else has taken over the lawn. In this case it's filling in a runnel from the overflow of one of the water barrels.
An observant person may think, "That doesn't seem to make sense. Looking at the slope, the water should be flowing to the right," and that person would be correct. The runnel started as a vole tunnel that Grrl spent a season digging up trying to find what smelled so intriguing.
But why is a pumpkin growing in the soil from the allium bed? Because last November I grabbed the pumpkins the neighbors didn't want by their front door anymore, chopped them up (the pumpkins, not the neighbors), and buried them in my raised beds. Do you know how much fertilizer is used to grow pumpkins commercially? Why let all that go to the landfill?
In the opposite corner we have:
This soil was used to try to create a slope instead of a sudden drop. Only about a foot, but a pain to mow. Okay, two volunteer pumpkin plants growing in soil that had pumpkins seeds. Doesn't make it a patch. Oh, but there's more. There is also:
This is in the middle of the yard, a good fifty feet from either of the other two. (My backyard is long but narrow. Maybe forty feet from the back door to the back fence.) And notice what isn't there? Loose soil. The plant is just growing in the middle of the yard. My backyard is a pumpkin patch.
Promised bonus picture: Stalking
Taken at my aunt's.
Getting me free admission into gaming conventions for a decade