kindergardens - week 21 {pumpkins and gourds}

How can it be that it is already time for another kindergarden post?  I am sadly behind...this week has just flown!

We harvested our pumpkins and gourds this week.

Aren't the pumpkins cool-looking?  I love all of the veins and different colors on them.  However, I will hazard a guess that these will not last until fall.  My dreams of a porch decorated with pumpkins during the month of October has fizzled and died - unless I want to go out and BUY a whole bunch of pumpkins.  Sigh.   Next year we will plant them later.  And kill the voracious cucumber beetles so that the pumpkins can grow up into adults.

As for our gourds, I am going to try to dry them.  I am not overly optimistic.  After I cut them off the vine the other day, I got on the internet and discovered that you're supposed to leave them out on the vine as long as possible - they will even dry by themselves out in the garden.  Oops.  Guess I went to more work than I should have.  The website went on to say that if you cut the gourds before they are fully mature, then the chance that they will rot increases dramatically.  Well.  I waited until the vine was dead, but our gourds didn't get a chance to mature (those ratsa-fratsin' cucumber beetles again), so I may have several of them rotting on me.  But I'm going to try anyway.

I ran to Lowe's (again! - I'm becoming a regular there) and picked up some of this:

Then I grabbed the drill and made holes through the stems of the gourds:

(Hubby taught me how to use the drill this summer.  I feel so empowered now).

After I had drilled all of the gourds, I strung them up on my newly acquired wire.  I was originally going to hang them up in the garage, but the website I looked at said that they can get pretty stinky as they dry.  I figured I didn't want to smell stinky gourds every time I climbed in the car, so they got banished outside.  I ended up hanging them on Kiddo's swing set. 

We'll see what happens over the next few weeks/months!  Stay tuned!  I am hoping to have at least a couple for some art projects next year.  Maybe something like this:

(courtesy of my super-talented preschool-teacher sister-in-law.  Aren't they CUTE??).

A couple of years ago I found this fun article in Parents magazine (archived online here) with lots of fun things to make out of pumpkins and gourds.  That led us to this little guy:

It's supposed to be a cat, but it looks an awful lot like a mouse.  Either way, Kiddo was smitten with it.

We also harvested our purple beans!  I threw a handful in a shallow skillet so that Kiddo could watch them change from purple to green as they cooked (chemistry assignment of the week:  what makes them change color?).

With school starting this week, it has been otherwise been pretty quiet out in the garden.  We still wander out there every few days for a tomato or two, but it's just about ready to be cleaned out for the year, with the exception of Hubby's peanuts, which are still going strong.  We've never grown them before - I'm tempted to pull one up just to see if there's any honest-to-goodness baby peanuts growing down there.

More adventures in "kindergardens" can be found here - go take a peek!