While there’s no frost in sight, there are pumpkins galore in our fading garden. This is about half of the first harvest and there are about this many more remaining in the garden yet to be harvested and set out to cure. We hope they will last until Halloween, safe from rot and pilferage. Vile pumpkin thieves multiply and grow bold as Halloween approaches, as we know from sad experience, but this year we have so many that even if a few went walkabout, we’d still have plenty of Halloween dècor. And all this bounty springs from only 4 hills of pumpkin plants, basically ignored all summer.
The tomatoes are finally coming in to their own and the sunflowers are just now setting blossoms at about 10 feet high but everything else is slowing down to manageable proportions. The aphids and the ladybugs are in a fight to the finish. The aphids are winning and sapping the energy from the corn, squash and cucumbers, but the ladybugs are giving it their all bless them. I’ve never seen so many in one place since I witnessed an aggregation of ladybugs on a hike in Redwood Regional Park many moon ago, and that is a different, winter phenomenon. Possibly I will photograph some of these industrious little aphid-munching factories at work and participate in the Cornell University Lost Ladybug Project.