The Attack of the GIANT Monster Pumpkins OR What to Do When Your Garden Doesn't Produce (Get it?)

Recently I ranted about pumpkins in my garden.  (See 'Various Sundry Stuff That I Feel Compelled...' of July 2011).  Long story short: Never allow your spouse and child to pick the seed packets for your undersized garden.

I should just post this in front of the garden for next spring.
Do I need to say this again?
Never, never do this.  It turns out badly.

This was one of the packets.  (There were at least ten.)  Although the pumpkin leaves attempted to take over the garden, the yard, and possibly the world, actual giant pumpkin production was limited to four.  (FOUR!)  Three of the big bad boys were targeted by insidious insects who believed that their need for pumpkin consumption was greater than our need for giant pumpkins to ooo-n-ahh over.  So we were left with this one:

I don't believe this pumpkin correlates well with the
pumpkin that is pictured on the seed packet.  (Upon close
inspection of the packet, it's my belief that that the child
in the picture is probably the shortest child alive and/or
something might have been photoshopped.  Just
my opinion.)  And in case anyone is being
silly, the pumpkin is the orange one in the above picture.

I've been studying the giant pumpkin seed packet and I think it's faulty advertising.  In fact, I think the advertising may be deliberately misleading.

This packet says it might grow pumpkins up to 400-500 pounds.  Hah!
I would have had to have a Miracle-Gro drip and a 24/7 guard out there
to protect from squirrels, slugs, things of unknown origin, and zombies.
(Zombies LOVE giant pumpkins.  Bet you didn't know that.)  ( I need
to go write a novella about zombies, right now.)  (I'm going to write
a zombie novella AND look up the word 'knowl' because it just
looks wrong.)

Oh, no!  I've broken out my bamboo pad!  This could be bad!

Oh, isn't it fun to cut and paste, even when you don't have
an X-acto knife?

Another tangent has just occurred.  Could be bad.

And I have burned Mellow, my sister's cat, again.  What does
this have to do with pumpkins?  Nothing, but it's funny.  Or at least
it is to me.

Here is another pumpkin that was grown in the patch.  It's an effed up pumpkin and it came from one of the non-giant pumpkin packages.  Apparently this pumpkin didn't know which way it's tail end was supposed to point so it curled up.  Doesn't this pumpkin kind of look like an alien?  (From Alien or Aliens?  Except orange?  Hmm.  Alien/pumpkin conspiracy.  Has that been done before?)

This looks really disgusting.
The cute part was that while I was
taking the picture Cressy stopped me
so she could give the pumpkin
bunny ears.  Haha.  Fooled the pumpkin.

It kind of looks like a peanut.  I think I was supposed to wait until it wasn't green anymore but insects were strolling by it and saying, "Hey, baby, you look good in orange," and "You aren't from around here, are you, honey?"

This train of thought makes me want to tell a pumpkin related story.  So here goes.  Once upon a time there was a sad and lonely pumpkin with a weird butt.

Oh, this is going to be bad.  Very, very bad.

So a fairy godmother came by and wanted to change the pumpkin into a neat-mosquito carriage for a girl who was going to be a princess for the evening.

But hold up.  The pumpkin didn't want to be anyone's bitch.

The pumpkin decided to get involved.  It became empowered and then got a makeover.  Later it came in third on Dancing With the Stars.  Then it wrote its memoirs.

The End.

See.  Even pumpkins with weird butts get a happily-ever-after.

That's my world.