Changes happen often in gardens and most gardeners suffer through the unpleasant as well as the good ones. My garden certainly is no different. Just two days ago, I was excited to see three little pumpkins on my big pumpkin plant (I call her Wanda).

Check out the arrows. One. Two. Three.

Tonight when I looked at them, one pumpkin has started shriveling up. I’m sure that in the next day or two, it will have fallen off the vine, destined to become fertilizer in the garden.

A week or two ago, I wrote that I no longer could see a pumpkin I was sure was there just a few days earlier. I wonder if the same thing happened to it; if it just shriveled up and died. I’m not quite sure what causes this to happen. I did read it can mean that either the bloom wasn’t properly pollinated naturally or the plant already has as many maturing pumpkins as it can handle for its health and size and so aborts new fruits naturally. 

There really are only three pumpkins on the vine, including the shriveled one, so I’m wouldn’t think that’s the case. However, I’m a bit worried that the squash vine borer I tried to remove awhile back has made the plant too unhealthy to support pumpkins. I hope that’s not the case but, as with many things, time will tell.