A spotty frost finally wiped out the mess of vines that had taken over the lower half of the garden – leaving the produce in full view.
Instead of a giant game of seek and find – we now had a recovery mission.
I sent Angel Girl and Buddy in the patch on a beautiful fall afternoon to find and harvest all the pumpkin and squash.
They gathered over 50 sugar pumpkins and about the same number of butternut squash.
Oh. my.
At least our squash-loving wood chuck left us a few! Ha!
I guess I need to find some friends or we’ll be eating a lot of pumpkin pie this winter. 
But that number was nothing compared to the real surprise we found under the dead vines -
ornamental gourds.
Millions and millions of them.
And we didn’t even plant them this year.
We obviously missed a few gourds in our cleaning up last fall and they seeded themselves and came up as volunteers.
We also obviously missed the fact that they were gourds when we were weeding. But then – it’s amazing how similar the leaves look to both pumpkins and squash. Really it is. 
But we are determined to not make the same mistake again. No sir.
We spent hours picking up gourds this week and composting them FAR away from the garden on the wood pile in the north pasture.
Pedro dumped over 10 wheelbarrows full of gourds.
We’re talking thousands of the pesky things.
At one point, as we were braving the cold north wind on our hands and knees picking up the mutant gourds, Dagmar looked at me and said, “We’re never planting these things again, right Mom?”
Never again! Although if we miss one of these this fall – we may not have to plant them!
And if we don’t burn that compost pile in the north pasture soon enough, by next fall they may have overtaken it, too.
Oh well. We’ll worry about that next fall.
But for now we have free ornamental gourds! All you can use! Come early for the best selection and bring your own wheelbarrow!
