Pumpkin Diary Entry #1

I really love pumpkin. I bought a half of a pumpkin the other day and decided to have a few chunks in some slow cooked chicken soup:

you can kinda see the chunks floating in their amidst the baby corn and carrot slices. 

Today for lunch I am having the rest of the pumpkin as roasted slices:

I wasn't so sure what to have with them so I've made some soba, and selected a handful of cherry tomatoes.

Now the thing is, this pumpkin has a lot of seeds. The seeds are big and beautiful, and I felt so bad throwing them away into the trash,

 so the last time I had some pumpkin, I dried the seeds and threw them out into my small garden, expecting them to mulch and become one with the soil.

And to my surprise, over a few days, one of the pumpkin seeds sprouted from a random pot that I had a half-dying basil plant left in the sun.

I had assumed that maybe because this plant has direct access to sunlight, it is finding it easier to grow, until I started to notice more and more pumpkin shoots in my other pots!

The ones that I scattered on the surface amidst other composting material also pushed through and found the sun:

 I am so impressed by their growth. It seems almost magical. I find pumpkins to be such fascinating plants in real life as well as in fantasy. I really need to find more information on how to create a good environment for all these new plants!