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A novice gets worried


You might remember about 2 or 3 weeks ago I posted a missive under the
title "A novice actually gets something", in which I described by golf-ball
sized pumpkins.   At that time a number of people told me about artificial
pollination, etc...

Well, I went out and lovingly played the bee to my pumpkins... dabbing the
male flowers from various plants on the female flowers of other plants...
humming "bzzzz bzzzz bzzzz" just to help convice the girl-flowers that
everything was normal.

Shortly after that, I had to leave town for almost 2 weeks.

Well, when I came back I found several things...

1)   basketball sized pumpkins
2)  the vines had escaped the bounds of my garden, and shot several yards
out onto the lawn! (a feat made even more impressive by the fact that they
had been several yards shy of the edge of the lawn when I left).
3) great excitement in my heart!

HOWEVER, I have a concern...   Those of you who watch the weather reports
may have seen that we are getting MORE flooding in SE Ohio again.   While
my patch is far above the local creeks, the ground is so saturated that my
pumpkins are either in standing water (only 1/4") or sitting on thoroughly
soaked mud.   I fear for rot and such.   Is there anything that can be
done?  Should I try to lift my basketballs up onto little beds of straw, or
would the damp straw cause more problems then it would fix?

It is not rainging today, but the forecasts call for rain again Friday and
Saturday.

---

A .sig is static        My life is dynamic.     I can't think of a single
quote or witty saying that expresses the mercurial nature of the changes in
my life.  The only constants in my life are stress,  my loving wife, and
the weekly hairball my cat leaves on the carpet.
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