So I Plant My Pumpkins

By G. E. Shuman

It is a very cold, late February afternoon. The thermometer is hovering around sixteen degrees today, if anything can actually ‘hover’ at that temperature. I recently came in from spending an hour or so of quality time with my snow blower. The weekend’s storm didn’t go away on its own, and I had to force the white stuff, once more, from the driveway. Such times always make me so happy.

I’m not sure how you feel about snow. I’m very sure how I feel about it, especially in late February. By this time in the snow blowing season I’m pretty much sick of the whole routine. Today’s battle with the white stuff sort of put the ‘icing’, so to speak, on the cake. You see, it is not only very snowy today, but very windy, and about half of the snow my blower was blowing turned around and hit me right in the face. Snow blowing on a sixteen degree windy day is not an advisable thing to do. Not to be crude, but it is sort of like Jack Frost’s version of ‘peeing against the wind.’ Anyway, what fun! I don’t mean to whine, but it is pretty much this way every year for me. So I plant my pumpkins, as I did today. (Therapy comes in many forms.)

I know, nobody in Vermont plants pumpkins in late February. Although, that’s not totally true, because I do. Nobody starts pumpkins in flower pots in February or at any other time, either, except perhaps someone with a face still stinging from using their snow blower.

I’m not totally sure why I do this winter-pumpkin-planting thing, but I believe it’s just for the experience of dirt, when all around me is ice. There is something great about warm, moist soil, even a little of it, this time of year. This is strange, but I miss the feeling, and even the smell of dirt, of soil, in winter. In February I start longing for green grass and flowers, for robins on the lawn and buds on the trees. So I plant my pumpkins.

This yearly ritual of mine, as strange as it might seem, is quite anticipated, and even premeditated, in a way. Every October I save a handful of seeds from the kids’ Halloween jack-o-lanterns. I tear a scrap from the newspaper they are using to protect the dining room table from “pumpkin guts”, as Emily calls it. I then put the seeds on the paper, and tuck it into the corner of a rarely disturbed window sill in the room. I guess I’m easily entertained, but it somehow amazes me that tiny parts from those freshly carved vegetables survive that Halloween night, awaiting the chance to grow and show themselves to still be alive. They dry and rest on that window sill, through Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. Then one day I come in from blowing snow, a bit discouraged from the cold. So I plant my pumpkins.

Several weeks will then go by, and I will water and watch the soil in the pot. Then, one March morning I should notice small whitish-green heads poking up from it. Those, within several more weeks, will have become large leafy plants, with fuzzy and familiar strong stems. And they soon after will bud and blossom, with those great big beautiful pumpkin flowers.

I know that I could just as well start some other seeds from packages, and actually grow a garden from the seedlings I would get. But those plants would supply no important link to last Halloween with the kids. The truth is, so far, I have received no further ‘fruit’ at all for my un-seasonal planting efforts. Actual pumpkins never seem to arrive, but that’s okay. The greenery and flowers are enough to keep me going until I finally get to put the snow blower away for the season. So I plant my pumpkins.