The Witch's Camp

So, this year I decided to try something new with our outdoor Halloween Decorations.  What I ended up with was The Witch's Camp.  I think it turned out pretty good and the boys love it.

Here we have the view during the day.  The witch does talk and cackle when she moves.  It's pretty fun.  I made the Spooky Trees out of branches from our wood pile.  Most of the components came from the wood pile, the dollar store or our pumpkin patch.

There's Collin and Liam hanging out with the witch (one of the few things that didn't come from the dollar store) and a number of the pumpkins from our pumpkin patch.

Here's the view at night.  It looks a little bit different now as I decided to add a little height to the spooky tree on the right.

First Pumpkin of 2012

Well, yesterday I picked the first pumpkin of 2012.*  This is the earliest I have ever picked a pumpkin.  Since I picked it on the last day of August and it was clearly in a big hurry to ripen I decided to name this 14.4 lb beauty . . . wait for it . . . August Rush.  I know; my creativity knows no bounds.  Sometimes I'm amazed my brain doesn't explode under the weight of all this creative genius.

*Technically, the first pumpkin I picked was the one that had gone rotten.  This was the first intact pumpkin of 2012.

Pumpkin Patch Update

As you can see from these pictures, all our "pumpkins" are growing well. The pumpkin patch has been doing remarkably better than last year. In the pictures above and below you can see that the big max pumpkins have actually been a success this year. The one that Liam is sitting next to will most likely turn out to be the biggest one I've ever grown. The one in the picture below should also be pretty huge.

One of the best improvements this year is the fact that, for the first time, I have not had problems with the dreaded powdery mildew. This has come about mainly because of a combination of changing the watering schedule and some homemade fungicide spray.

The above is currently the biggest of my jack-o-lantern pumpkins. We have several more but this is the one that is the furthest along.

I tried my hand at growing white pumpkins this year as well. The above is the biggest one we have. Anyway, if all goes well we should have between eleven to fourteen pumpkins of various sizes and colors this year.

Liam Joseph O'Berry

Liam Joseph O'Berry was born today January 19, 2011 at 6:44pm at LDS Hospital. He was 6 pound 15 ounces and 20 inches long. He has ten little finger and ten little toes, two blue eyes and a little cute nose. Mommy and baby are doing just fine.