8/15/10 What have we here?

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I did a bit a pruning.  I also mentioned that I am not the most adept gardener.  Today I was just hoping to find that A was still alive.  A is indeed still alive, and for the moment, does not have any diseased looking leaves.  As a matter of fact, I think A even looks all around a bit greener (probably wishful thinking though).

Whilst looking for the best way to prune a pumpkin, I came across some  information about pruning the vines.  The bit that stuck with me was, 'vines can grow up to 30 feet.'   I DO NOT have 30 feet of space for them to go.  I have like four.  This all becomes pertinent when I tell you that it appears as though the first bits of vine appeared today, the tendrils.  They look like little curly cue pig tails.  From what I understand, the vines may need to be pruned to go where I want them to go, or at least go where there is a little bit of room, preferably on my property.  One more note on the pruning though; I am going to have to keep up on these vines.  If I don't, I strongly suspect that my neighbors will...

"They" (the internet people) say that a pumpkin usually has two vines, a main vine and a secondary.  "They" also say that the vines can be trained to do almost anything, for instance climb a house and make fruit on the roof.  That, I assume, would definitely piss off my home owners association.  I'm going to have to try it.

The little tendrils are apparently going to start looking for things to hang on to soon.  My guess is once this starts to happen, the plants will go pretty much wherever they want.

Stew or Steve is doing a fine job with protection, don't you think?  Lets hope the little tendrils don't carry him off...