An Indoor Pumpkin

I've started growing a pumpkin plant in a small pot on my terrace. From everything that I've read (all of which I decided to read after the plant had already sprouted) this is not a good idea but I'm sticking with it. I was looking at the tiny seed selection at Walgreens thinking that maybe I'd buy some Lily of the Valley seeds since I'm maybe having that for my bouquet come the wedding in October. Of course, Walgreens doesn't have seeds as daring as Lily of the Valley so I was about to give up and head home when I saw the pumpkin seeds. Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday and there's something about carving pumpkins that's become like Communion to a Catholic for me so I caved and bought a pack. Seeing as how it was around April and good Pumpkin planting time, according to the seed packet, I grabbed a pot, dropped in a seed, and waited to see what happened. So less than a week later and I had this beautiful little sprout that you can see.

In some fit of maternal instinct he's been named. You can call him Linus. I'm hoping that things will time out alright and Chris and I will be able to plant him in the garden we may or may not have when we find a new apartment in August, assuming that the roots haven't burst out of the side of the pot before I get that chance. When I was searching online for information about the possibility of growing, and not killing, a pumpkin plant indoors I found a total of one website addressing it. The site had nearly no text, just a series of photos showing a small sprout growing into a slightly larger plant with a few leaves that then fell over and died.

So, hopefully, anyone else out there who gets impulsive near the seed section but lives in a city, like me, where a piece of earth almost never comes with the rent, can find out from me if you can squeeze a big dream into a small pot. Although, I've got to say that I'm not looking forward to pollinating it. I can either set a hive of bees loose in my apartment or carefully determine the sex of each flower and use a q-tip to pollinate them all by hand. Bees cause me to freeze up and make terrified little girl shrieks so Q-tips it is. Wish me luck.