Danged Crookneck!

How does your garden grow?

 Here is our garden update... It has been OVERRUN with stinky CROOKNECK SQUASH!


Don't get me wrong.  I like eating it every once in a awhile but you only need to plant one and you get a million off of it so you give it to your neighbors.  Well we never plant it because we are the neighbors you pawn it off on.  I am grateful to you and  because I get it from you I don't need it in my garden.  So when Sophie, Shayne and I went to check out the garden after a week and a half (due to the incredible 3 days rainstorm we had and our trip to Bryce Canyon) we were surprised to see a garden full of crookneck!  I remained calm and called my parents.  I have never grown Giant pumpkins so I wondered (hoping, praying and trying to convince myself it could happen) if these little yellow things that look like squash were truly pumpkins that will transform into gorgeous huge pumpkins.  Much to my dismay, they laughed and said no.  You know when you fill up a water balloon and at first it just fills up the bottom and has a long skinny neck then eventually the whole thing fills up and it is a perfectly round water balloon?  Well...that was my theory.  Danggit!  So I hung up with my parents and after some heavy investigating we found a couple of the cutest watermelons you've ever seen!
 

  I got excited and decided that the crookneck had to go in order for my baby watermelons to grow.  So up came on of the biggest plants with about 7 squash on it.
 
Then Shayne pulled another one up and so did Sophie.  At first we thought maybe the neighbor (J'Neal Robinson) had planted them in our garden but we were there first!  So out came plant number 4 and 5.  A couple months ago I did a family Home Evening on a story from the New Era that an actual neighbor of mine from Lehi had written about how one year he and his Dad were thinning the crops in the garden when he noticed that a potato plant had popped up in the middle of the corn.  It was a healthy wonder plant but his dad told him to pick it.  After some pleading to his dad about how wonderful the potatoes will be his dad said, "Son this year it isn't a potato, it's a weed."  There are some things in life that are wonderful like having kids and getting married.  Things that the Lord had told us to do.  But if they aren't done in the right order then they are weeds that need to be picked.  Here is a link to the talk: This year it's a weed.  After the crooknecks were gone we were able to get a better look at what our plants really looked like.  PUMPKINS!  Real pumpkins!  They are darling!
 

I am secretly hoping this little guys turns out like this one of my dad's.

 And one cantaloupe! It looks like a kiwi.  Hey kiwi!  There's an idea...maybe next year.

 We were on cloud nine!  All we wanted out of this garden is enough pumpkins to show the kids that all of their hard work really does pay off.  Squash is fine to grow but if you want your kids to really love gardening then you must plant pumpkins.  Pumpkins take forever to grow but have the biggest payoff.  Halloween!  Everything else you just eat.  Kids don't really understand that you are saving money by growing something they are just going to eat in 2 minutes and then be done with it.  But they get to be excited for months to watch their pumpkin grow and contemplate which face will get the privileged to be carved on it!  So, I am renewed with faith in our little seeds that they will grow and turn out to be the veggie they were meant to be.  Not some stinkin' CROOKNECK!
p.s. I talked to J'Neal and she said that she didn't plant any crookneck there either.  Must have just grown there to teach us a lesson.