The vines are withering and dying....Oh NO!!!!!

It would appear that the pumpkins are all healthy and doing well, but as of today Weed Destroyer has withered and died. He lost a baby pumpkin :(
We count about 9 healthy pumpkins, but I'm afraid the one orange one that's visible will just rot on the vine.... it still has another month or so before the season is upon us (plus it looks all warped).

I'm not sure why the vines/leaves are all turning brown and dying. I'm giving them plenty of water.  Scouring the internet indicates there could be a fungus among_us.  I think I missed my window of opportunity to destroy the destroyer of my pumpkin plants, but I'll try a fungicide and report back.

Hang in there little pumpkin plants!

The way back time machine

I know, I know... I've been slacking off on the whole blog thing.  Other things have occupied my time, so I'll post when I can.  The pumpkin patch is seriously overgrown right now, so I thought I'd go back a little in time to previous pictures and talk about some things I never got around to.
First off.....the race. Which pumpkin plant had the most ambition this year?

Races are much more interesting when the racers have cool names....like horse racing. I believe it was The Simpsons that had a horse called "About to be Glue".  Naming things is always tough. You want it to be interesting, but not random.  My kids name their stuffed animals by stating something obvious, like its color, and adding a "y" to it.  For example, one bear is named "Browny".  I took the liberty of naming the pumpkin plants (and allowed my kids to pick a few) so our race would be more interesting. While I can't really have a running commentary, you can at least join in the festivities in celebrating the winner.

Names for the race

The origin of the names isn't that impressive, but I'll share anyway: I named Gourdy in honor of my kids. ie. state the obvious and add a "y". Weed destroyer and Bob were the kids choices. Pumpkinerina Uno is the first plant to yield a pumpkin and while I would have preferred Pizzeria Uno, there are no pizza plants in my garden. Trooper is the plant that I wrecked at the beginning of the season and it survived. Bird Fertilizer should be obvious as the bird house is right over it. And finally we have Seven. The reference is to the Seinfeld episode. I would have preferred "Mug", but it was the 7th plant I put in the ground.

The 1st image above clearly shows that "Bird Fertilizer" is the winner of the race to the fence. Congratulations and best of luck to our future racers.  While the race to the fence may be over, we can still have contests as to which plants yield the most pumpkins or the largest, etc and so on.

We've already had one casualty. Pumpkinerina Uno has lost one pumpkin already. For whatever reason it rotted on the vine and became mush. Rest in pieces mushy pumpkin.