Enough with the bailouts, debates, wars and stock market collapses. Let's talk pumpkins — as in Steve Connolly's attempt to grow the world's largest (ever) pumpkin.For the past five months, the Boston Globe reports, Connolly (of Sharon, Massachusetts, above, with pumpkin) has given special care to his gourd, slaked its thirst with a garden hose, shaded it from the sun with a cotton sheet, kept off the rain with a plastic tarp. He regularly fed it an exotic recipe of ground bone, blood, fish, molasses, and cow and chicken manure. Now more than 16 feet around and weighing an estimated 1,878 pounds, it is packing on 11 pounds a day."He has already surpassed the previous world record of 1,689 pounds. Connolly now wants to grow the first full ton pumpkin. Now he worries about teenage vandals, cracking and loading the monster onto his truck without tearing it apart.