SECURING A PUMPKIN, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

Sometimes a bit of bad news can enhance a person's self esteem. In other words, be good news. Does that sound something like a first cousin to an oxymoron? As an aside, do you think the average man-on-the-street can define an oxymoron?

Some, chemistry minded, might think of oxygen, oxy being a prefix for something combined with oxygen, and, combining it with moron, a fairly familiar word, come up with the speculation that an oxymoron is a silly person full of gas!

However, the prefix, oxy, also indicates something sharp or witty. Something sharp and witty combined with something moronic equals oxymoron. The dictionary defines the word as "a rhetorical figure in which an epigramatic effect is created by the conjunction of incongruous or contradictory terms." Savvy that? Why, sure the average man-on-the-street would, unless he gets stuck on rhetorical, epigramatic, conjunction, and incongruous.

Let me get on with my first statement about bad news can sometimes be good news. After the above introduction maybe you are expecting something lofty and philosophical. Not! I deal mostly in earthy things -- iron soup kettles, clay pots, rain on the roof, checked gingham, crickets, clothes lines, pumpkins.

Pumpkins! Now for the oxymoron of a bit of bad news that may, for me, have been good news. Did you read the news item that stated that wet weather had caused pumpkin vines not to produce pumpkins, and that a pumpkin virus had attacked the pumpkins this year? That's bad news. However, I was beginning to feel like a failure at one of the more easily grown plants, the pumpkin. I had planned, as you might know if you followed my pumpkin growing effort this season, to train a vine to reach for heights and settle a pretty pumpkin on my garden seat where I could see it from many windows and especially from the back porch swing.

The vine grew all over the place, up staked tomato plants, up zinnia plants, sprawled all over where the lettuce and onions had been. It had beautiful big blossoms that opened to the sun. Dozens of them. But, alas, no pumpkins. Not even a thimble-sized nubbin, or would it be pubbin?

As mentioned above, I felt like a failed agronomist, chagrined, embarrassed. Then came the bad news that made my day. Most all midwestern pumpkin patches were so affected. I straightened my sagging shoulders, lifted my chin and faced forward with a look of steely triumph (I read that somewhere in one of La'mour's books)!

So, Lauren and I, belatedly celebrating our birthdays, along with the parental middle generation between us, went to the pumpkin patch. We rode the flat bed wagon pulled by the big Belgians but didn't get off to pick pumpkins. It was muddy and the pumpkins that were still unpicked looked as if their undersides may not have been pretty, the top sides sometimes splotched with something, maybe mosaic. We consoled ourselves by remembering that there were plenty of pumpkins for sale at the orchard house where we would go later and decided to get off the wagon to pick apples. This orchard ride is always an exhilarating, autumn experience. Fellow wagon riders are in a jovial mood. The world's troubles seem suspended. The odor of apples, crushed grass, straw, cider and mums is in the air. Breezes usually stir one's hair and make a jacket feel comfortable. As I filled my apple bag, I wondered if some of them had progressed from the blossoms I had stopped to admire and smell last spring, metamorphosed as colorful as that of the butterfly.

Back at the orchard house we drank freshly pressed cider, ate Cajun popcorn, warm apple butter, visited with friends, looked at all the crafts and bought pumpkins --big, beautiful pumpkins. So, in spite of my pumpkin growing disaster, I have a pumpkin on my garden seat. Yesterday an inquisitive squirrel hopped up on top of it. My camera is never close at hand to catch these wonderful pictures. I have to store them in my mind.

Being earthy, I'll probably cook my pumpkin later and make a pie. An old book, "Five Acres and Independence" says this should be don. It's something like "having your pumpkin and eating it too." Who said that? Socrates? Marie Antoinette?

Some oxy-moron full of gas?

REJOICE!