The Annual Package

 

Every Spring, my dad digs a hole in his and my mom's vegetable garden and drops a few seeds in.  He covers them over and waits.   Most of the produce gets eaten up as quickly as it ripens.  Not this plant.  It's meant for something else.  It's leaves and blossoms sprout.  It's vines spread and curl around anything it can reach.  The fruit starts out dark green but doesn't stay that way for long.  When it's ready, he cuts it off the vine, wraps it in bubble wrap and gently tapes it up in a box.  The USPS ends up taking it where it was meant to go.  Every year, even if they live in Bellingham, Charleston, Meridian or Grand Forks, Luke and Jack get to open a package of apples, squash and PUMPKINS grown in Papa's garden.

 

Side note:  Luke is becoming an awesome reader. Here Tim is helping him figure out who the package is from.

 

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of these pumpkins carved up because we never got the chance.  We put them out on our front porch, just to have them stolen and never seen again.  Some of my old youth group leaders heard about the pumpkin thievery and felt so bad for my depressed boys, they sent ice cream gift certificates to cheer them up.  Ice cream does wonders.  Luckily, the runt of the bunch was still left in the garden so my dad quickly packaged it up and sent it off.  We got to carve that one! And me, being the slacker that I am, didn't take a photo of it.  Sorry.

Hopefully it won't be too many more Octobers until we can drive over to Nana and Papa's house to get the boys' pumpkins.  Until then, we'll wait impatiently for our October package.