Mairlyn's Photos - Cot 20 2025 - A Thousand Pumpkins

 

The Pumpkin Festival is on at the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG).  I was there yesterday with the Lily Society’s bulb sale.  The entrance to the RBG had a display of over a thousand pumpkins, set on the ground in mosaic display patterns.  And there are so many colours and kinds of pumpkins now.  Is pumpkin hybridization recent or are we getting access to ancient varieties that haven’t travelled the world?  o be sure, tThe light gray and cream colours are very stylish now. The gray ones are the Jarrahdale pumpkin - an ancient eating variety. And what about the Peanut pumpkins with the warts on their skins - caused by sugar crystalizing within the pumpkin’s flesh.  They are considered exceptional flavourful and are a French heirloom variety.  Farytale and Cinderella pumpkins are the deeply lobelled and squat shapes - again a French heirloom variety.  I wonder if the French are the pumpkin hybridizing masters. Pumpkin varieties have wonderful names: Porcelain Doll, Casper (like the ghost), Goosebumps, Mint Prince, Batwing, Cotton Candy, and that wonderful Turk’s Turban.  Here’s a partial stroll through the Pumpkin Trail Festival yesterday. starting at the entrance, then into the Mediterranean Greenhouse, through to the Pumpkin Trail in the Rose Garden, with the giant pumpkin and the wonderful pumpkin house.

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Marilyn's Photos - Oct 6 2025 - The Biggest Pumpkin Is

 

This is the time of year when really big vegetables hit the news.  There are lots of pumpkin contests now.  We've been in Half Moon Bay, California, where you drive along Highway 1 and there are pumpkin patches on the ocean-side of the highway.  Magical!  But the biggest pumpkin festival int he world is in Germany - Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival.  It runs from August 23 to Nov 2 2025.  That sounds more like a fall fair and beer festival to me.  In Canada where we grow a lot of pumpkins, the largest so far is 2,537 pounds in Alberta in 2022.  The world's largest pumpkin was 2,749 pounds in 2023 grown in Minnesota - at the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay.  How did they get a pumpkin in one piece from Minnesota to California?  That's a question as interesting as how to grow a pumpkin that big.  Supposedly, Henry David Thoreau grew a pumpkin in 1857 weighing 123 pounds and he wrote about it, so he stands as an historical marker for giant pumpkins. "A giant pumpkin is an orange fruit that is a cultivar of the squash Cucurbita maxima, commonly weighing from 68 kilograms (150 lb) to over 910 kilograms (2,010 lb)." This is not the pumpkin we make pie out of or carve for Halloween so don't feel bad about the pumpkins you grow.  These cultivars have been sold since 1834, so Thoreau came late to the game.  Being so big, they can grow up to 50 pounds a day. As they grow huge, they "pancake" out and may collapse under their own weight.  A cracked pumpkin is a disqualified from competition pumpkin. So it is just a week or so away - October 13th - and we'll find out if there is a new largest pumpkin champion.

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Sep 22 & 23 2023 - Spam

 

Yesterday's post didn't get out into the your inboxes.  So here it is today.  The Food That Built America on the Smithsonian Channel this past week gave us this history of Spam.  Its name is a portmanteau for spiced ham.  It was pork shoulder that was the key ingredient, considered un-profitable when it was put into a can in 1937.  During the Great Depression, anything cheap that would keep on a shelf would have been amazing.  So Spam did very well.  What is Spam made of?  Pork, salt, water, sugar, potato starch and sodium nitrite.  It actually looks good today for a list of ingredients. It has evolved into many dishes since then. "A local dish in Hawaii is Spam musubi, where cooked Spam is placed atop rice and wrapped in a band of nori, a form of onigiri or riceball. Varieties of Spam are found in Hawaii and Saipan that are unavailable in other markets, including Honey Spam, Spam with Bacon, and Hot and Spicy Spam.  Hawaiian Burger King restaurants began serving Spam in 2007 to compete with the local McDonald's chains (which also serve Spam)." In the UK, there are many Spam recipes: Spam Yorkshire Breakfast, Spamish Omelette, and Spam Hash. Spam can also be sliced, battered and deep-fried into Spam fritters. Britain has a particularly beloved relationship with Spam.  Today's use of SPAM is continued as an expression for unsolicited emails?  It seemed to arise from the Monty Python sketch song, which sang the word over and over.  The sketch was set in a café that mostly served dishes containing Spam, including "egg and Spam, egg bacon and Spam, Spam egg sausage and Spam, Spam egg Spam Spam bacon and Spam".  You can have fun remembering the sketch at Wikipedia here.  How many cans of Spam have been sold?  Eight billion were sold by 2012. This is last year's display at the local farm stall on Victoria Street in Vineland.

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Oct 4 2022 - Pumpkin Pie on the Horizon

 

Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among most religions after harvests and at other times.   But North America's two Thanksgivings are Colonizing Settler Festivals - distinctive compared to everyone else as they relate to survival rather than just celebrating the harvest. We call our thanksgiving "Canadian Thanksgiving".  It is a Canadian Joke.  The date?  It was late - in 1957 - that Canada fixed Thanksgiving to the second Monday in October.  There aren't that many Thanksgiving Days around the globe.  Japan's holiday is Labour Thanksgiving Day - an all in one celebration of labour and production that started during the American occupation. The  really big #1 holiday each year is New Year's and there are variations and versions all over the globe.  Thanksgiving is far down the kist of important holidays - except for us Canadians and Americans. The distinction of  the Thanksgiving meal is pumpkin pie.  I wouldn't consider pumpkin pie part of Christmas or even desirable t Christmas.  But it is for Thanksgiving.  Native to North America, it was exported to France and then England in the 1500s.  How perfect that the Pilgrims brought the pumpkin pie back to New England when they arrived. Canadians have a notion that everything has  "become" political in the U.S. in the last few years.  Here's how far back the social politics goes:  When Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, observers in the Confederacy saw it as a move to impose Yankee traditions on the South. We' have our own Canadian jabs and snubs about the earlier date of "Canadian Thanksgiving"  -  You don't have to wake up at ungodly hours to participate in Black Friday with your parents.  When Americans get around to posting about Thanksgiving, Canadians have "been there, done that."

There are lots of pumpkin displays - at the farmer's fruit and vegetable stands and in front of supermarkets.  They are autumn's celebration here. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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Oct 3 2021 - Punkin Chunkin

 

What are the games of Autumn for children?  Here are the games listed at Howells Pumpkin Farm:  Zombie Paintball, Apple Cannon and Pumpkin Slingshot. Doesn't that look interesting - Pumpkin Slingshot.   Many of the articles start with Do not DIY... It looks like an innocent  game for little kids at Howell Pumpkin Farm. However, Wikipedia's entry for Pumpkin Chucking shows it is a big-time amateur scientist activity. The World Championship Punkin Chunkin, held annually in November in Delaware by the World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association (WCPCA), was the first and largest annual competition. The event ran annually from 1985 to 2013; a myriad of legal and logistical problems caused multiple events to be cancelled after that...and in 2016 more injuries happened. The problems make the headlines with  injuries - 16 year old, 9 year old,  'Punkin Chunkin' producer. The Science Channel seems to get involved in crazy activities.  CNN covered the story HERE.   The producer of the show was severely injured.  Look at the pictures of the launchers and it makes sense.  These look like huge science experiments gone berserk.   Despite all the issues, these remain popular events.  There is a long listing of punkin chunkin festivals in the U.S. in 2021 HERE.  Maybe they are more like Howells Pumpkin Farm with little kids and little slingshots. This is the Bizjak farm stand on Victoria Ave in Vineland.

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Oct 26 2020 - Halloween Guinness Time

 

The world's heaviest pumpkin happens every year in various countries, but that isn't about Halloween.  These pumpkins come in at over 2,500 pounds.  Here's one that comes in over 2,000 pounds and became a jack-o'-lantern: "The world's heaviest jack-o'-lantern was 2,077 pounds (approximately 942 kilograms), and the record was achieved on October 6, 2018 by the Cosumnes Community Services District at the 24th annual Elk Grove Giant Pumpkin Festival in Elk Grove, California.  The massive gourd was grown by Josiah Brandt. Mike Brown, Deane Arnold, and Brandy Davis carved the lifelike face on the pumpkin." The fastest time to carve one tonne of pumpkins. "Stephen Clarke is the jack-o-lantern master. With a sharp knife in hand, he’s terrifyingly fast when it comes to pumpkin carving. On October 29th in 2008, he managed to carve an incredible one tonne of pumpkins in just 3 hours and 33 minutes while at Harrah’s Casino Resort, in Atlantic City, NJ (USA). " Most lit jack-o-lanterns displayed "A wonderful title to complete the round up, the most lit jack-o'-lanterns on display is 30,581 and was achieved by the City of Keene, New Hampshire. Keene was the original record holder in this category and has now broken it 8 times since the original attempt. The beautiful display of candle-lit pumpkins is the perfect sight to put anyone in the mood for All Hallows Eve; happy trick-or-treating!" I found a series of images with things made of pumpkins.  They look like lego life-size.   And our picture is a Sweet Autumn Clematis floral portrait.  Once they finish blooming the seeds are the pretty display.

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Oct 7 2020 - What's Big is Wide

 

Is there a widest thing on Earth?  I find that we don't account for width - there is the tallest, longest, deepest and largest things around the world and in the universe.  There is a biggest thing in the universe. The biggest thing in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis great Wall, first reported in 2013.  It is so big that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the structure.  In comparison the universe is 13.8 billion years old.  That is big and wide.   On the simple scale of us humans, there are lots of big things to visit nearby.  I found a website that lists all those 'big thing' statues in Canada - there are lots of them. Nearby is the Niagara Falls Flower Clock - it made the list.  There are Snowmen, Apples, Moose, Cows, Muskie, Muskoka Chairs, Saws, etc. all over the province. The big item really is the changing colours of the leaves across the landscape. The escarpment shows off the colours beautifully. The colours are moving past their peak in Algonquin Provincial Park with 100% change and leaf fall of 60%.  The Ontario parks.com site doesn't include any provincial parks in Niagara - perhaps our colours are not as dramatic as others in Ontario.  That certainly would be the case with northern forests. Here's their pretty chart on peak viewing.   I took a picture of the floral clock - so here it is  today - with the large hydro-electric grid in its background.  And then we have two examples of our pretty colour display in Niagara - the informal and extensive pumpkin and chrysanthemum festival.

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Weather Report x 2

I was checking out the Weather Report for Grimsby - warm summer temperatures for the next few days.  At the same time, a Weather Report song was on the radio on JazzFM.  They regularly play two of the jazz fusion band's songs -  "A Remark You Made" and "Birdland".  I think it is Jaco Pastorius' bass lines that draw my attention to the songs every time I hear them. Our Canadian Thanksgiving is concluded - and what does every Thanksgiving meal finish with?  Of course it is pumpkin pie - it has to be one of the delicious desserts. Pumpkins are a member of the gourd family and are also considered winter squash.  Pumpkins have been grown in North America for about 5000 years Pumpkins were once recommended for removing freckles and healing snake bites  Pumpkins are 90-percent water The world record for giant pumpkins remains in Germany! For the second time in 3 years, the world record for giant pumpkins has fallen at the European Weigh-Off in Germany. German grower Mathia Willemijn brought this behemoth pumpkin weighing 2,624.6 pounds to the weigh-off on October 9, 2016. Here is a picture of a person paddling on a pumpkin in the water as part of the world record pumpkin pictures.  I thought I should insert it as you might not believe it could be true. Our picture is shows the garden rendezvous with night lighting, part of my experiments for "The Night Garden".