Gardening in the “Dale” of Hillsdale certainly can be quite challenging. Normally it is a rule of thumb to safely plant and transplant frost sensitive plants at the May 2-4 weekend. Unfortunately where we are it is not uncommon to have frosts well into June. So frost sensitive pumpkins and squash don’t get planted here until the middle of June. On top of the late spring frosts we will also receive early autumn frosts in late September. Even though I had my pumpkins covered with a tarp, they still got touched with frost.
So I ended up buying fully ripe pie pumpkin at No Frills. It was a beauty, weighing at just about 3 pounds. Then I pulled out the pumpkin seeds I saved from last year and put them beside the pumpkin. How does this pumpkin process happen? I ended up weighing my dry pie pumpkin seeds. There is 8 seeds to a gram. Doing some mathematics, with 454 grams to a pound, that works out to 3,632 seeds to a pound. Or the weight of a 3 pound pumpkin is equivalent to the weight of 10,896 seeds. With giant pumpkins weighing well over 100 pounds, the ratio would be far, far greater.
Sometime this past spring someone planted a tiny pumpkin seed in the ground. Under the influence of sunshine, rain and nutrients from the soil that little pumpkin seed had taken off its coat and gone to work. It pokes up through the soil and spreads out. In a few weeks blossoms are forming. But they need pollinators to form a pumpkin. For myself I do everything I can to attract pollinators. Absolutely no poisonous herbicides or poisonous pesticides on the lawn or garden. With the blossom pollinated, a pumpkin is forced out. By the time it was harvested it had gathered over 10,000 times its weight. In the middle of the pumpkin is a cavity containing a handful of seeds. Each seed is capable of doing the same work all over again.
What architect drew up the plan? Where did that little pumpkin seed get its tremendous strength? Who came up with pollination? How did beautiful orange pumpkin gets its colour from such a plain seed? Where did that pumpkin seed find that delightful pumpkin extract flavor. The most learned man in the world really cannot fully understand and explain the complexities of a pumpkin. But the most ignorant man can still sit and eat a piece of pumpkin pie. And thoroughly enjoy it. This time of year you will find pumpkin flavored baked goods, coffees and desserts. Including pumpkin pie, a Thanksgiving favorite.
There are a lot of verses in the Bible that relate to the seasons and seedtime and harvest. God is the architect of it all. Genesis 8:22 reads: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.”, There is so much about God that I don’t understand. But I still trust in God. In the same way I don’t understand the intricacies of how that little pumpkin seed when given a warm fertile soil, sunshine, moisture and pollination will produce a pumpkin. Which is over 10,000 times the weight of that original seed. But I’ll still go ahead and plant that seed.
Both life and gardening can also have challenges. My pumpkin patch didn’t go according to plan this year. But that’s okay. I’ll save the seeds from the pumpkin I got from No Frills and try it again next year. In the Christian life, we also don’t give up. Galatians 6:9 reads, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up“. Thank you for reading…Carl.
Disclaimer: All written content is my own original creative, expressive content with no Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance. All photos are taken by myself using my 18 year old Fuji Finepix camera. Then manually uploaded off my SD card onto my computer. No digital editing with these photographs and definitely nothing AI. Doing what I can in my little corner to not support this technology oligarchy, data centers and environmental destruction.
