A Story about Pumpkins

On my neighbourhood walk with my dog yesterday, I passed by a house whose owner I know to talk to. She knows my name, knows my dog’s name. She is an avid gardener. Works very hard at having a gorgeous landscape and great variety. This year she had grown some pumpkins from starter plants. They were huge! She lives on a corner lot and the vines were travelling down the side of her property along the fence line. One of the pumpkins, which had grown to be quite large, she’d set on an overturned flowerpot to help the plant support the weight of it. I used to marvel as I went by there at how healthy – how big! – grocery-store big! – these pumpkins had become. So yesterday I complimented her on them (they were all gone, the growing season behind us now). She said, yeah, they were great until someone stole three of the largest ones! She suspects that it wasn’t kids playing a prank or acting on a dare; instead that it was an adult, as the pumpkins seem to have been carefully cut from the vine. So disappointing, that someone would do this, isn’t it? Yet here’s the rainbow after the storm …

She put up a sign, ranting at the person responsible for taking the pumpkins (I would have done the same!) and a girl in the neighbourhood, a grade 5 student, brought her a card, on which she’d written how sorry she was about the stolen pumpkins, along with some seeds for next year’s crop! How wonderful is that?! Proves that for every jerk out there, there is someone to neutralize it, someone to smile and brighten our day, someone who puts a little faith back in humanity.