Watermelons are the new Pumpkins

Our autumn weekends have passed us by way too quickly! We did not have the chance to do many of the fun fall things that we usually do. The first weekend in October I got my wisdom teeth pulled, so we did not do a whole lot that weekend, then the following two weekends in a row I coached gymnastics, and I never coach on Saturdays so that threw those weekends for a loop. Finally, during the last weekend of the month, Dave and I were out of town. The Tuesday after we returned, Alyssa started A Christmas Carol rehearsals, so even when we do have a spare moment at home, she's never here, and it seems like we are stuck in this holding pattern, just waiting for her to get home so we don't do anything fun without her. It kind of feels like a Fall Fail on the part of keeping up with little traditions we enjoy. We didn't visit any pumpkin farms or even buy or carve a single pumpkin this year. Oh well, time marches on and there's always next Fall.

The first week of November I still had not harvested our remaining watermelons from over the summer.

But once they were picked and lined up on the back bench, they looked almost as cute as a row of pumpkins sitting out there. And about those pumpkins we tried to grow this summer...yep, that's them in front of the watermelons. What started out looking so promising as beautiful orange blooms with a little pumpkin sprout at the bottom eventually failed to grow.

I debated letting the girls paint the watermelons {I'm pretty sure it's too late to eat them} or even try to carve them. It can't possibly be any harder than scooping out pumpkin guts, right? But it might just be time for them to go to the compost pile. So regardless of my desire to make watermelons the newest autumn trend, I would likely have a very difficult time convincing the rest of the family that watermelons could take the place of pumpkins as an appropriate Thanksgiving sidedish.

A few photos of the girls to serve as a reminder to myself that we really have done something other than run from place to place in the last several weeks...

Dave took the two younger girls to Laternennacht {Night of the Lanterns} while Alyssa was at rehearsal, and I coached.

Rebekah chose some German Dance dresses that she would like to wear. Miss Irene better get busy on these soon if each girl is going to have anything this intricate by GermanFest in July!!

Emma spent a great deal of time working on building a castle for their German Castle unit.

Rebekah has played lots of my little pony lately. Poor Dave was trying to watch an Iowa game less than two feet away from these ponies in all their beautiful glory.

We went to a Hearts and Hands quilting night at school where each family was given a quilt square to design and the squares will be assembled into beautiful blankets and sent to an orphanage in Bolivia. We also were able to design squares with the letters of the alphabet to hang up in one of their classrooms.

Our sweet teenage birthday girl on the morning of her 13th birthday! She was in love with these jeans from Dave's parents. They are a really dark denim wash with a super sparkly sheen to them. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!

The weather was nice enough today for me to go for jog outside earlier today. What a blessing, and at least a little surprising for the end of November ~ I love to exercise outdoors so much more than inside! So maybe Fall is not gone for good yet...

Planting and Growing Stuff this Summer

Mary, Mary, quite contrary how does your garden grow?

Honest answer: I have no clue.

I have never been good at gardening of any sort, and all my attempts to plant a vegetable garden have failed miserably. The only plant I have successfully maintained is our jungle of raspberries, which are technically weeds that require no effort whatsoever. So when Dave and the girls went shopping and brought back not one, not two, but four plants that looked anything but "easy-growing" I wondered how long I could make them last. With some incredible help from the girls, I have been pleasantly surprised.

Typically, our only staple harvest of the summer is the raspberries, and this year they were great. I learned how, or I should say Dave learned how and then read me the instructions on how to make jam ~ isn't it pretty?

We are using the topsy turvy things to grow our tomato and cucumber plants. The girls water them everyday and amazingly, they just grow. The tomatoes have not turned orange/red yet, we are being patient.

The cucumbers have been great! They aren't quite the perfect oblong shape as the ones in the produce section, but they taste perfect.

We've been thinking about pumpkins since May! The girls were so excited about these cute little pumpkins in a cup. We have no idea yet if an actual pumpkin is going to grow, but it sure has been fun to plant and keep an eye on them!

The girls are not about to eat them here :-) ~ they are using a plastic fork to pull apart the small the soil tablet that came in each cup. After planting the seed, they had to grow and germinate in these dome lidded cups for a couple of weeks. Then they were ready to go into the ground.

The tallest leafy thing here is currently what each of the 3 pumpkin plants look like. I need to weed the area around them. We are keeping fingers crossed that by Fall, we'll have at least three round pumpkins to be excited about.

This next plant is probably what I am most amazed with and excited about! It does come with a warning however. We started with this tiny little Wally the Watermelon plant that we decided to put in the planting bed along with our blueberry plants {that likely will not yield fruit for at least two more summers} because they both need a very similar acidic type of soil to grow well. I knew, being that it was a watermelon, that the plant would hopefully get bigger.

I had no idea it would take over the entire 7-8 foot long by about 3 foot wide area! It just kept growing leaf after leaf, twisty vine after twisty vine until it encompassed the entire bed. We can hardly see the blueberries anymore, and I hope that is okay for those plants! So, only try to grow watermelons if you have plenty of room for them!!

But thrill beyond thrill, we walked out a couple of weeks ago and found several pea sized watermelons. It really is silly how happy these tiny little things have made us ~ only one of them has gotten much bigger than a pea so far, but we have hope that many of them will continue to grow.

The biggest one yet...when it was about the size of a quarter I enthusiastically told Emma that Rebekah had found the biggest watermelon yet and did she want to come outside and look at it. She followed me and when she saw the quarter-sized fruit looked at me like I was crazy for being so excited. She laughed very hard at the entire watermelon that she could eat in less than half a bite.

So proud of the proof of her hard work out in the garden this Summer!