Great White Pumpkin Report:

A while back I wrote about our family's Great White Pumpkin Competition. Here is a report from the Flint Hills Webster-Armstrong White Pumpkin Registry:

Tricia: Of nine seeds sown (I am keeping one seed, the 10th, in the pumpkin bank), I have 8 healthy and viable-looking pumpkin starts, ready to go in the ground. In fact, they are inches long. Past ready to go in the ground, methinks. The trouble is Mr. Weather. The past two days we have had frost warnings (yes, it IS mid-May in Kansas, the time when we normally have the AC cranked and are hunkering down from the gale-force winds, rains, and tornadoes.) This morning we awoke to a mild 37º sunshine.

I did transplant one extra-long starter this weekend into our grotto. It was too long for its 1"x1" starter pot, and I knew the roots would be stunted. So out it came, into the wilds of the grotto, in amidst my banana trees, the poinsettias, and avocados. It will be a sight to see, I believe, come August. I will have to caution any grotto guests to "... mind the pumpkin vines, Dearie."

Paul: "My pumpkins are 10' high." (He is operating on a secrecy theory, apparently. Like seed companies and orchard packing companies do: don't let the competition know...)

Back to MY plans: We have a circular area out in our horse pasture which is hay-covered. This winter we had 5 round bales which we pushed/rolled, one-by-one, month-by-month, out to the round hay dilly (I never learned the real word for this thing.) And the leftover remnants of hay are sitting there, beckoning my pumpkin starts. So I lay claim to that plot of land Sunday on the way in to church. (I wonder if that Spouse o' Mine is secretly envious that I called dibs on it before he did? Nah...I am sure Mr. PhD BioSystems Engineering has something up his sleeve...)
I'm thinking that old hay may be good mulch and heat shield, come July.

On another outdoor-springtime note: last night, just minutes before our dinner guests arrived, I spotted our FIRST hummingbird, flitting in the grotto. This morning I went to the basement and retrieved all my hummingbird feeders, filled them, and set them out in the grotto. And I sat down to coffee with a cat. And not 5 minutes had passed, but a hummingbird swept in and got his fill of sweet red stuff.

I do like Spring.