It’s official. We’ve got a pumpkin.

So much for my freak-of-nature expertise in the garden.  Remember that enormous, magnificent zucchini I grew? 

Well, apparently, it’s not a zucchini.  It’s a pumpkin.  I guess.  I really don’t know.  I’m assuming because it looks like a pumpkin, it’s a pumpkin (but you know the old wives tale about how to spell assume, don’t you?).  I do, too, and I don’t prefer to do either. 

Maybe a pumpkin seed slipped into the zucchini seed packet at the “packaging plant.”  It’s possible, though I don’t remember seeing anything that “stood out from the crowd” as I was dropping seeds into the dirt.  Not that I’d notice.  I’m very intent on my business when I’m planting.  Have it down to a real system. 

Could be a zucchini-pumpkin hybrid.  Is there such a thing?  Could even be a stray seed from the compost dirt.  I did buy pumpkins last fall…to carve Jack-o-lanterns and make pumpkin pie.  It’s possible one survived, though rather unlikely it would have conveniently ended up in the exact row for its specific family of plants — in the exact spot I planted the zucchini! 

It’s a good theory, now that I think about it.  Spotting “stray” sprouts across my garden, I transplanted several of these accidental compost “thrivers”  (I’m a sucker for a plant with the will to fight for survival).  While I don’t recall this particular one, it could have made its way there.  Happens.  

At this point, it doesn’t matter, does it?  I have a pumpkin.  I’m accepting it as a pumpkin and while not thoroughly overjoyed, I am still proud to call it my own.  After all, I grew it myself.

Check back in October and see if I’m as good growing pumpkins I mean to grow as I am with those I don’t!