Hi everybody. A gala week in the garden. For starters, some third and fourth graders visited the pumpkin patch. Look what happened.

First,

Next,

And,

Our first pumpkin. Hooray! How fun is that, to grow and pick your own pumpkin in school? Pretty soon, pumpkins were flying out of the beds - with a few complaints about the pumpkin vines's stickiness and prickles. By the end of the visit, the children harvested 8 pumpkins. One is missing from the photo, below.

Afterward, the pumpkins rolled to the school vestibule and welcomed moms, dads, teachers, and staff to Parents Night.

In the meantime by the sandbox and the portable classrooms, the garden keeps growing. We have more tomatoes. Some children made a tower of them, with two squash.

Now there's even a pumpkin growing outside the fence.

During the pumpkin harvest, some spiders scampered out of the yellow squash blossoms, startling the third and fourth-graders. An attempt was made to capture the scene on film, but the spiders skedaddled and all that was left was this guy (girl?), who looks like a relative of the ladybug. Any thoughts?

The carrots fronds grow bigger and more feathery by the day. We have 3 eggplants now. And beet tops have begun to poke out of the dirt, although the beets need a week or two more before we harvest them. A boy who stopped by with his father did harvest a couple of strawberries after some encouragement, however, with a look of nervousness and wonder and surprise. 

Happy garden. 

- Holly