The girls help me get the soil ready

"The worms! They're everywhere!"

"Quick! Let's pick them up!"

It turns out Erin makes a pretty good shoveler.

Leah, she just loves to dance.

Lots of worms mean healthy soil...


But maybe this is over doing it a little bit???

That's a shovel full of worms and dirt from the compost pit. The girls and I worked on the garden today. I'm going to move the planting date up some, I just haven't decided when the new date is. Maybe about May 5th.

This is what makes America Great!

Ah, the great white north, where pumpkins growth with reckless abandon...

Wouldn't it be great if there was a cable TV channel dedicated to our favorite sport?

I hope the apple won't fall far from the tree!

This is the pumpkin my new seed came out of - the 974.5 Bhaskaran 2005. (The picture is shamelessly stolen and used without permission from the grower, David Bhaskaran. Dave is a grower in Minnesota who generously gives his seeds to wannabees like me.)

I'm really excited about this year's seed. The father of David's pumpkin is a seed I've seen offered in seed autions before, and the pollinator came from a 1420 pound pumpkin. That seed has been named one of the "Twelve Seeds to watch for 2007"! It makes my hands shake just typing those words... this year's gonna be sweet!

By the way, if you're a fan of grotesquely huge pumpkins, you ought to check out the pictures of David's pumpkins:

http://members.aol.com/dbhaskaran/pumpkin06/