Sunday 1 November 2009

Pumpkins


Two happy looking pumpkins are grinning at me through the window. Garden Girl insisted that her pumpkin must be smiley and happy and not at all scary and why not? Pumpkins after all seem to be the most fun vegetable available. The seeds are large and easy for a toddler to plant carefully and when they start to grow they weave and wind themselves around the garden, their tendrils crawling and climbing. Their flowers are large and colourful and then they grow into lovely large orange balls which seem to get bigger every day... Well, if they grow successfully that is... ours stopped growing when it reached the size of a medium cabbage and failed to turn orange in time for halloween. But despite our own failure the pumpkin remains the best toddler vegetable.


Because our pumpkin was clearly not going to be ready for halloween, a couple of weekends ago we headed to Luton Hoo Walled Garden's Pumpkin and Apple Gala and had a brilliant day out. The pumpkins were the highlight of the day. There was a large area with pumpkins growing where Garden Boy ran around trying to pick up steadily bigger pumkins until he eventually settled for climbing on top of the biggest one and sitting there proudly with a huge grin on his face.

There was also a stall of pumpkins and a variety of wierd and wonderful squash. I asked our Little Garden Helpers to choose a pumpkin, but they were both determined to choose one they could carry, or stumble with, themselves so we ended up with two medium sized pumpkins.

But the fun of pumpkins does not end there. There was a wonderful display of decorated pumpkins from local primary schools which had us all smiling and then our Little Garden Helpers delighted in painting there own. When we got home and the paint had dried Garden Girl then added faces and two tiny pumpkins now sit on top of our TV smiling down at us. Garden Girl and Garden Boy also loved the 'scarecrow pumpkins' posing for photos with them. Choosing a face to carve into their own pumpkins provided hours of amusements, with endless drawings of round faces each with a different design, all carefully created by Garden Girl and shown to Garden Boy for approval. Then there was the delighted faces when they first saw the carved heads, glowing in the garden. They both stand at the window trying to blow out the candles through the glass, pull faces at the them and 'beep' their noses.

And then there is the pumpkin soup which Garden Girl loved and gobbled up in no time. Usually the last to finish her meal due to her delightful dinner time chatter, we ate our pumpkin soup in relative quiet while she wolfed it down.

How many other vegetables can you turn into scarecrows, decorate in a variety of brilliant and inspired ways, use to test your strength, sit on, dive over, roll about and carve into happy faces? The pumpkin might be associated with scary halloween but in our house they are all about grinning and fun.

3 comments:

  1. And that is such a good thought for Halloween. Grinning and fun can't be beat!

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  2. Great fun, I love the happy pumpkins!

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  3. Hi hope all is well with you and yours, I have left you an award on my blog :)

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