Project 365 day 299: Pumpkins

For Tiny Tuesday's pumpkin theme, this is the base of the smallest pumpkin I have grown this year, one of eight little orange spheres about 12 cm in diameter. I can see a grotesque little face in it. I think the variety is Becky, as so far as I can see from my rather messy notes, they are the only orange ones I sowed, but I expected them to be a good deal bigger, and do have a couple of significantly larger orange pumpkins too which look quite different. It's the first time I have grown this variety - I'm still searching for the perfect good sized orange pumpkin for J to carve (or rather, for me to carve to J's very challenging specifications!) while also being well flavoured and storing well. The extra is poorly lit but included for scale: it shows this little pumpkin balanced next to the stalk of my largest pumpkin this year, one of two very big Polar Bears, which are supposedly white but in my experience always this pale creamy yellow. I have grown them several times: they are often very large, and produce plenty of light orange, nicely flavoured flesh which is good for soup. So far this autumn we have had one pan of soup, made with the delicious, dense orange flesh of a Crown Prince squash combined with one of these little pumpkins and a small marrow, and I hope I can find time to make pumpkin pie at the weekend.