Last fall we had bought a couple of Jack-o-lanterns for the kids to carve, and they went into the compost bin.. I spread out some of that compost in my garden this spring, and some volunteer pumpkin plants came up. Now I had grown myself some sugar-pie pumpkins last year, so I am familiar with them, but when this particular plant came up, I knew it was different because the vine seemed a lot thicker.

After a few aborted pumpkins, one finally survived, and has been growing nicely. Here's a pic of it today. Its about the size of a small basketball. The plant itself is actually rather short, I am surprised. Its only about 5 ft long, but it seems to have spent most of its energy making this pumpkin rather than growing any more. So I doubt it will make any more, since the few female flowers it has made since, it has aborted them even before they open.