Harvest 2010

Michael has always loved gardening, collecting seeds. He'd rescue an avocado pit from the garbage can, gather pumpkin seeds every Halloween carving, carefully saving them in a ziploc. After a reasonable tomato harvest last year and terrible results with a lemon tree, we were determined to plant pumpkin seeds this spring, anticipating great orange results.
We are in So Cal, but our particular house gets almost no sunlight. We finally decided that above the water meter in the front lawn was the only spot, worrying we'd get reported to the homeowners' association.
My parents planted Japanese eggplants & cucumbers every year, buying starters from nurseries. I remember creating wells around each plant, fortifying with blood meal, and watching the circular dams hold their water. These generally went into pickles - salted, bran fermented - a staple of Japanese food largely missing from restaurants these days. Leaner postwar memories, when pickles provided a cheap, flavorful counterpoint to a bowl of rice with little protein.

But Michael's farming instincts seem driven by literary and film fantasies, long favoring pumpkins. A charming story, Farmer Boy, described an elaborate plan to feed milk by straw into a pumpkin, fattening it for a contest prize. (A Tacoma dairy farmer friend confirmed this strategy, btw). Our little black box yielded these fabulous leaves taking over the lawn,

until we got a beautiful deep orange Cinderella pumpkin (to the left).
Then he brought these peppercorns back from school grounds - full of instructions on drying, roasting, shelling.
A dad at soccer practice last night offered a pure bred golden retriever, but we're renting and transient, so can't offer a home we don't have. But we're glad for neighbors' animals we borrow and for park equipment our postage stamp backyard lacks.