This is the one "pumpkin" we harvested this year. Admittedly, it's a peculiar looking vegetable. At first we thought it was just a local variety of zucchini, but the leaves and flowers were much larger. It just kept growing. Bigger and bigger, longer and longer, like the beanstalk in the fairytale. And although it was very vigorous and even now has many flowers - which Rebecca likes to ... clench! - in the end all it produced was this one pumpkin. But what a pumpkin!
This year, since I decided not to start a vegetable garden from seeds but from transplants (here), we've had some interesting surprises. Partly because of linguistic misunderstandings: many local people, in fact, speak a dialect that I can't quite understand, but also many heirloom varieties are still grown locally. And so this summer we harvested grape tomatoes when (I thought) I'd bought cherry ones (I'm in fact so pleased with the grape tomatoes that next year I'll grow them again). We grew heirloom zucchini mixed with regular zucchini. And then we produced this one heirloom squash, which was sold to me as a "pumpkin."
My neighbors told me to store it in a cool, dark place. So away it went into the wood barn. Until today: it's heirloom pumpkin soup time!
