Friday, August 25, 2017

A Small, Surprise Pumpkin

One of my home projects this year was to clean up the landscaping around our house. The front was overgrown and needed to be trimmed back, so I spent countless hours clearing out dead brush, thinning out the already growing plants, adding fresh new colors, and laying down mulch. It was weed free, clean, bright, and beautiful, exactly what I had imagined.

This work was completed within the first few weeks of summer vacation. Now, we are beginning another school year and the other day, as I went out front to get the mail, I noticed something growing up through my hard work. At first glance, it looked like a weed, a vine-like plant growing out from between a patch of pink cone flowers. On closer observation, I realized it was a pumpkin plant, already blooming bright yellow flowers, one of which had grown into the smallest pumpkin I've ever seen, and slowly creeping its way into my grass.

I stood there for a good ten minutes, baffled at how a pumpkin plant could be growing there. My initial thought was the local squirrels. Then, I remembered. Last fall I had decorated the house for Halloween with pumpkins. This plant must have grown from the seeds that were left over after the pumpkins had done their part in the festivities and had started to rot.

I could have easily gotten mad or frustrarted. So much hard work to make the house look neat and organized and this pumpkin plant was not part of the plan. It would make cutting the grass more inconvenient. It didn't necessarily match the look of plant I was going for. I didn't know if it would affect the other flowers. I didn't get mad, though. After I stopped standing there, dumbfounded at how it got there, I smiled.

This little pumpkin was my own unintentional fault. It was something I had let happen by accident, never thinking for a second that my Halloween decorations from the fall before would have left seeds that would invade the vision of my summer project. It was almost as if it had grown, not my accident, but intentionally. A small lesson to be learned as the new school year begins.

What is the lesson to be learned from this small, surprise pumpkin? Sometimes, we take so much time to pull weeds, till the soil, plan, and plant, but things don't end up as we imagined they might. Most often, they don't. The weeds grow back, the flowers don't bloom, or we end up with a surprise pumpkin growing in our garden. It is up to us to love the result and appreciate the surprises that might find their way into our gardens, seemingly by accident, but most likely, by some unintentional design.

Can you spot the small, surprise pumpkin? 
Can't wait to see how many we get!