Ballad of the Butt Pumpkin

This summer I grew a curiosity worthy of a roadside attraction.  Here’s the back story.

I have a (non-paying) side gig growing pumpkins.  I grew them for years at the pea patch in my former neighborhood.  When we moved down island three years ago, there were unclaimed plots at the old patch so I kept growing a mix of carvers and cookers there, sharing them with my former neighbors.  Slippery Slope’s fenced garden doesn’t have room for a sprawling pumpkin patch, but last spring I set up a pumpkin pen in an out of the way spot on our property, a ramshackle affair the farmer referred to as my Don Quixote project.

The farmer was speaking of the structure – built from left-over fencing and old metal posts – but to me the very endeavor of growing something also seems quixotic.  Against experience and common knowledge, I still feel at the beginning that the prospect of a small seed or start turning into an expansive, expanding, fruit-bearing life form is unlikely.  So there is this small background anxiety – “will it really work?” – but other than that every step process is pure pleasure.  It epitomizes the best kind of ritual, with every yearly action experienced three ways: joy in the moment of doing; fondness in remembering the last time, and anticipation of repeating next year.  If I get to a seventh age of infirmity and confinement, my pumpkin growing memories will provide escape: hands cradling the frail root ball as I place it in the soil; picking my way through the leaves and vines of a cool morning a month later to find the rooted spots so I can water them; the pumpkins starting to color and revealing themselves as the leaves recede after another month; sharing the bounty; preparing and eating the soup and the curry and the muffins …

This year’s process started differently because the dearly beloved Saturday market where I buy starts was closed on account of Covid.  So, on a misty day in May I peddled to the source, an island treasure called Pacific Potager, where I purchased five plants, stashed them in my pannier, took four to cohousing for the pea patch, and cycled home with the last one for the pumpkin pen.  Per usual, they were listless for about a week after the transplanting while they gained root-hold, and then they took off, sending out vines and growing extravagant leaves.  The male flowers appear first – I don’t know why – and the females follow a week or more later.  In the warm weather they find a higher gear: vines extending as much as ten feet from the center and the leaves forming a near-unbroken plane about a foot off the ground.  Bees wallow in the big flowers.  The chestnut-sized fruits seem to appear overnight.  Soon they are softballs, then basketballs and some go further than that.  It all happens as quickly as the summer itself.

For slippery slope’s pumpkin pen, I chose a variety called rouge vif, a.k.a. Cinderella pumpkin. The plant was happy in the pen.  It sent one vine north, one east, and three south. All but one of the vines grew a single pumpkin – the fifth was fruitless.  Each pumpkin grew close to the fence (this seems to be a habit of penned pumpkins, I have noticed).  The pumpkin on the northbound vine decided to grow directly under the fence.  When it encountered the fence wire, it adopted the same strategy as another famous Vashon plant and grew around the obstacle on both sides.  Soon there were globes on either side of the fence, with the fence wire almost completely obscured beneath a deep crack in the pumpkin.  The anatomical association was obvious.