It’s hard to imagine missing home— the return of the rains, the cold gray darkening days sweeping down on us—when I’m sitting in the golden October dawn and summer-like heat of Tucson.

But I do.

Because it’s pumpkin time back home and all my little babies are ripening, my plump orange, stripey and warty, plucky little babies. I want to nestle their excessive weight in my arms as I hoist them from the wet ground to the blue wheelbarrow, as I roll the wheelbarrow up the drive to pile them on the porch out of the rain.

But they are what got me here, to this lovely city in the Sonoran desert.

I’m at the 2012 Garden Writers Association Symposium. Last fall I wrote a little missive, some tiny words of praise to the mighty pumpkin and those words are being awarded a Silver Medal of Merit tonight at the GWA Annual Awards Banquet here at the La Paloma Resort near the Catalina Mountain north of Tucson.

If you want to read my song of praise to the pumpkin follow this link to the Northwest Horticultural Society’s website. Scrolled down to  Garden Notes  and look for the FAll 2011 issue. My column is called The Story of Plants.

you’ll find the pumpkin there.