More Pumpkin

I've been having a hard time remembering which way is up this week. Between the insomnia and shuttling back and forth to the inlaws for overnight due to the oil overflow incident plus the extra time involved with taking the bus, I'm off my game. I slept about 9 hours last night so I'm feeling human again today. I also did errands and my centering ritual which involves checking the refrigerator for bad dairy and scrubbing my bathroom sink.

We switched oil companies this winter and signed up for autofill. They use some sort of scientific quadratic equation that factors in daily temperatures and how much oil you've used in the past and who knows what else and then they bring you oil when you need it.

Historically this has worked perfectly for us and we normally get two deliveries a year. The problem started a year ago with the company we used to use because first I asked them to fill us up in the Fall and they said we weren't ready yet. I said we'd prefer to fill the tank then because the autofill *always* comes in the middle of Christmas when it would be nice to avoid an extra expense. They talked me out of it and then delivered our fuel in the middle of Christmas. By April we were very low on fuel and we kept expecting a delivery but one never came so finally we called and they told us we weren't ready yet.

Like they would know better than us.

So we ordered 100 gallons and vowed never to do business with them again. Now we have this new company and I knew they planned to fill us up in October but I thought it would be more toward the end of the month.

That's why when I smelled oil, I assumed our tank was busted and not that it was related to a delivery. After some sleuthing (full disclosure: our neighbor St. Joe of 44th Street came over and looked at it because we're not very bright) we figured out that it wasn't a leak it was an overflow. This is a photo of the moved pumpkin.

We spent the night at my mother-in-law's again last night and now the house smells about 90% back to normal. We've got another service call this afternoon to replace the broken part and check on the clean up. They've also noted the size of our tank so this won't happen next time. And hopefully this means that we've worked out all our bad furnace karma before the dead of winter.

On to pumpkin talk because there hasn't been enough pumpkin around here lately.

I've brought all my pumpkins in except the oil spill pumpkin and this patch here. These are my best ones and I'm worried that someone might come by and play kick ball with them. The big ones are ready but there's this little yellow one that started late and is growing like mad and I want to give it a chance. I don't understand pumpkinology and why some vines wither and you just bring the pumpkin in and other vines keep going and going. The way these vines are connected, I can't cut off the big one without cutting off the little one, too.

This patch in the front of the house was my joke patch. I just threw them in there to see what happened. It ended up being my heartiest plant.


This vine looks like it could keep going. There are even flowers on the vine.

The weather is supposed to be decent this weekend so my goal (we'll see how ambitious I am) is to get everything ready for the bulbs which should be arriving next week.