Farmer Gayle Picks the First Pumpkin; Assistant Farmer Boston Goes to the Hospital

[queerbychoice]

I clipped the first fully ripe pumpkin off the plant yesterday, and Susan photographed the event.




Unfortunately, Assistant Pumpkin Farmer Boston was unable to witness the event. She spent last night in the veterinary hospital and is still there today. We don't really know what's wrong with her. She was fine until Friday evening, when she suddenly threw up vast quantities of the most ghastly-smelling vomit imaginable. It wasn't the normal stink of dog vomit, but an unearthly stench that words are not adequate to express. We thought she'd be fine now that whatever was in her was no longer in her, but on Saturday morning she didn't want to eat breakfast. She did want to drink a whole lot of water, but Susan noticed that the inside of her mouth felt dry. Late Saturday evening, she threw up several more times, and at least some of those times, it had the same stench. On Sunday we took her to the vet, because she hardly wanted to do anything anymore but lie on the ground and look pathetic - she didn't even follow me out into the yard for the daily survey of the garden like she had done on Saturday, but simply lay on the patio looking glassy-eyed and ill.

At the veterinary hospital, she's been getting IV rehydration and anti-nausea medication. An X-ray found nothing inside her that shouldn't have been there, and we don't know of anything she could have eaten around here that might cause this. I looked up all the plants in the yard on Google for toxic effects on dogs, and although there are a few that could make her throw up - milkweed, oleanders, elderberry, and some plants that I think are chrysanthemums - none of them seem like they should make her continue throwing up all weekend, and all except the chrysanthemums have been there for at least a year - two years for the milkweed and three years for the oleanders - without the dogs having any problems from them. Most of them are supposed to taste horrible enough to discourage dogs from trying to eat them. Also, none of Boston's vomit contained any visible plant parts, so I think it's more likely that her illness was not caused by eating any plants. Susan is worried that someone might have thrown something poisonous over the fence from the apartment complex next door, but at least at the moment, I'm more inclined to believe that Boston has a disease of some sort rather than poisoning - perhaps just a sort of canine version of stomach flu, though probably not something contagious, since Ganymede hasn't caught it.

Also, Farmer Gayle is turning 34 tomorrow! With any luck, I should have Assistant Farmer Boston back home by then as a birthday present. She could come home this afternoon, depending on whether she eats and keeps down the food that the vet offers her.

Edited to add: Boston is back home now. We still don't know what caused the problem, and the vet didn't really do anything other than giving her the IV rehydration and anti-nausea medication. But at least she no longer looks glassy-eyed. Now we're supposed to give her 3 to 4 very small meals per day of rice, cottage cheese, and chicken for the next five days, followed by a week of gradually transitioning back to her normal diet.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome pumpkin. I hope that Boston recovers fully and well.

[jeremytblack.livejournal.com]

I hope Boston recovers, too.

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

Hopefully things are alright with Boston, but I imagine it's at least a good sign that the vet sent her back home.

What does Farmer Gayle plan to do with this pumpkin?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Farmer Gayle has no clue what to do with the pumpkin, actually. Farmer Gayle is accepting suggestions! Currently, the pumpkin is just sitting on the front porch.

[maju01.livejournal.com]

I take it you don't actually eat your pumpkins (apart from in pumpkin pie)? Here in Australia they're a widely used vegetable, though actually what we call pumpkin is more like what you call winter squash, I believe.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I do like pumpkin pie, but I'm not familiar with other ways of eating pumpkin. Do you just eat them plain, raw?

[maju01.livejournal.com]

No, they have to be cooked but they can be either boiled or baked and eaten as a side dish plain, or they can be cooked and then mixed in with other ingredients to make, for example, pumpkin lasagne or pumpkin risotto, or they can be made into soup.

[fyreharper.livejournal.com]

I've never cooked a pumpkin, but I'd imagine you could use one in the same way as most any winter squash.

Also, happy birthday!

[prairiecity.livejournal.com]

happy birthday! perhaps you could make a birthday pie out of that pumpkin.

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

Question! I took pictures of my backyard garden but don't know the LJ codes to post images or hide them behind a cut.

Aaand that's about it.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

Uh, maybe it's my computer being weird, but this response appears to be blank.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I was hoping you received comment notifications via email, in which case you would be able to see the code used to create the image link. It's not a real image, because I used "insert image URL here" where the URL should go.

There used to be a way to make HTML code display as HTML code in LJ comments, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. I guess I'll just give you a link to the appropriate FAQ pages:

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=75

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=6

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

Happy (belated) birthday Farmer Gayle!

Yum, pumpkins. A home-grown pumpkin would totally make my (birth)day, never mind that it'd be even more out of season on my birthday than it (presumably) is on yours.

Did something happen to your glasses while I wasn't looking?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I wondered whether anyone would notice the absence of glasses! I've just always worn my glasses only when I leave home. Since this picture was taken at home, I wasn't wearing them.

I do sometimes put my glasses on for pictures at home, solely for the purpose of the picture, with the reasoning that glasses are part of my "public image," so if people outside of my home life are going to see me, I should be wearing my glasses. (I also put on my glasses at home if we have company over, for sort of the same reason but also because I need to see people's faces more clearly to be able to read their facial expressions if they're people I don't know very well.) I thought about doing that this time, but decided not to bother.