I've been dying to write about the magic pumpkin vine growing wild (and I mean really, really wild) in our front yard but, until now, haven't found the time. It's been one of the highlights of my summer. I suppose it's appropriate to write about it tonight, since tomorrow is the first day of fall.
The first week of July, as we were gearing for our week of vacation at Santa Rosa Beach, Fl, I noticed a vine of some sort growing in our front yard, along the sidewalk near our front porch. I didn't think too much of it and, frankly, I was glad to have anything growing in the front yard at that point. Almost all of our grass had died due to the lack of rain and the hot, hot weather.
Upon closer examination, I realized it looked an awful lot like a pumpkin vine, which was weird, because Jude had planted some pumpkin seeds in the garden (but not in our front yard, obviously) back in the spring. I decided to let it grow and told Duane, who mows our grass, to mow around it while we were gone on vacation. He left it alone and when we returned to town, it was clear we were dealing with a runaway pumpkin vine. At that point - in mid-July - the vine was about 3 or 4 feet long.
One of the cool things (and there are many cool things about it, actually) about the pumpkin vine, then and now, is that we had and have no idea where it came from. The theory we like the most is that a bird picked up some pumpkin seeds after Jude planted them in the garden and dropped 1 or 2 in the front yard. Or, perhaps, Jude and J.P. dropped a pumpkin seed in the front yard while they were walking to the garden. On the other hand, maybe the pumpkin vine is magic and it decided on it's own to grow in our front yard this summer. Maybe it will grow in someone else's yard next summer.
Anyway, the pumpkin vine continued to grow. And grow and grow and grow. Almost by the day, as the summer marched inexorably on, we could see it had grown substantially bigger than the day before. Soon it was 10 - 15 feet long and bright yellow blooms appeared up and down the vine. The blooms themselves are very cool - they open up wide in the morning and bees fly lazily from one bloom to the other. By midday, the blooms close completely, not to open again until the next morning.
By mid-August, it was readily apparent the pumpkin vine has a life of its own. It had grown in a straight line along the sidewalk, parallel to the front of our house, all the way to the garden. When it reached the garden, it made a 90 degree turn and grew toward the street. Then, it started shooting vines off toward the sidewalk again. Now, the pumpkin vine measures probably 30 feet in one direction, 40 feet in another direction and it's covered, conservatively 20% of our front yard. Friends that stop by the house marvel at it.
We even have a couple of pumpkins that are growing, one that's actually decent in size with a fully formed stem, which is cool. J.P. and put some straw down underneath one of the baby pumpkins to prevent it (hopefully) from rotting from sitting in the dew in the mornings.
This evening, as J.P and I played "landscape company" in the front yard and Joey watched us from his bouncy seat on the sidewalk, I noticed for the first time that some of the large, normally deep green leaves near the origin of the vine were turning yellow. I looked closer and saw that the original vine - which has been a green so deep it's almost black and very, very thick - was starting to wither away. I'm pretty sure the entire vine, and the pumpkins, are going to die, slowly. That makes me sad.
The summer - Joey's 1st summer - is ending - dying, if you will, never to return. The same could be said of the magic pumpkin vine. I've so enjoyed looking at it each day, before and after work. It's been great to talk about it to J.P. and to look for pumpkins. It's been fun just to wonder how the pumpkin vine got there and how it grew so rapidly.
I keep thinking the pumpkin vine is a metaphor for something else. Something bigger. Something that came into my life unexpectedly, brought me great pleasure, then left too soon. I don't think I can go that deep tonight, though. It's almost 9:45 p.m. and time to head back home on a beautiful night - the last night of the summer of 2012 - with Joey sleeping peacefully in the City Elite stroller.
Maybe that's what the pumpkin vine represents - all of these summer nights I've spent with my youngest son, strolling around the neighborhood as he slept. Winter will be here soon and, also soon, Joey will be too big for me to stroll him around at night. He'll be sleeping in his bed and I'll be back to watching TV or reading, and these summer nights spent with him will fade away until their just a distant memory.
Or maybe it's just a pumpkin vine.
No comments:
Post a Comment