Pumpkins

Harvest time. Fall is well under way and that feels really good. And somehow, that's kind of a miracle, considering I was really, really reluctant to leave the summer behind. I'm not sure at what point the transition occurred, but it certainly began with the sight of pumpkins lying copper-orange in the fields and appearing like colourful gateposts at the entrance to farm stalls.

Now many of the houses around us have pumpkins sitting on their front steps. I love to see that, especially as this is new to me since coming to North America. In South Africa we don't have this same variety. Pumpkins to us are mostly flat and white and are eaten as an extremely tasty vegetable, or in the form of fritters for dessert. Yum.

But now a funny thing has appeared. Large, round white pumpkins. Somehow they look so completely wrong to me that they cause a kind of internal wince. Now I don't know if that's simply prejudice, but I have to confess to being put off by all these new vegetable colours. I prefer my tomatoes red, my beans green and so forth. I suppose the real question is... does a different colour affect the taste? Last summer, being late with my seed purchases (as usual) I settled for purple beans because they were the only organic seed packets left. Actually, we didn't enjoy those beans and I won't plant them again.

Sometimes, like the transition between summer and fall, I grow accustomed and even learn to like things that at first appear strange and unappealing to me. So maybe that'll happen with white pumpkins. And I suppose, for Halloween, they're closer to the original turnip lights than the orange ones.