See that thar, Charlie Brown? That’s my baby pumpkin vine, Mortimer. As implied, he’s new to this world, so let’s all take a moment and make him feel welcome. He’s going to be pumpkins, lots of them, even going so far as to be the pumpkin.

Yes, that’s right. The Great Pumpkin. (Suck it, Linus.)

See, I’ve planted pumpkins three times this year. The first time, I was full of hope; I’d started my new gourd-awful hobby with a vegetable medley in my heart and an extra kick to my step. Unfortunately, a wild pack of dogs (which looked absolutely nothing like the three we own… nothing) trampled both the patch and my hopes. So, a week later, after shedding tears, hair and dignity, The Insta-Princess soothed my emotional wounds and convinced me to try again.

But the pack came back.

Despite my fiendishly clever fencing system of small stakes and nylon string, the dogs actually had the audacity to jump over my makeshift barrier and trample my pumpkins again. I reached for my gun. (I have two… both of which I’ve never fired–much less loaded–and both of which are kept because they’re antiques.) The Insta-Princess stopped me in my rage when she pointed out I was inserting the bullets from the wrong end. “And I’m pretty sure that’s not even the rifle. It looks like a curtain rod.”

Week Three: I plant new seeds. But do I stick with one kind? Oh, no, in a shout-out to my desperation, I planted regular field pumpkins, the namby-pamby French kind (“Kids! It’s just like the pumpkin from Cinderella!”), and the really frickin’ huge kind that can grow to over 500 pounds. See, what you’re supposed to do is to whittle down the growing pumpkin sprouts to three to a hill. Not me, I’m leaving all twenty of them in. They can fight their way to the top, even Mortimer; it’ll teach him to be strong, to not take life for granted, to be the best goddamned pumpkin he can be.

And the dogs, like Linus, can suck it.