22 April 2016

Squash

#AtoZChallenge
Squash.  Now, this is something I hadn’t really thought about.  Can’t remember eating it in any great quantity til sister moved back home and cooked it for us.  The whole family showed up when she was done.  And we ate it with gusto.  Mighty tasty, that squash was.  We ask her to cook it again and she’d just given me the recipe.

Me.  The one who has to burn food for years before getting the proper touch for it.  Well, I grew a couple varieties of squash…. By the way, I discovered that pumpkin is a squash.  Course we only ate pumpkin in pies at Thanksgiving.  I remember carving them as a kid.

We’d each get a pumpkin and have to cut it, pull the insides out and then make a face.  I struggled with the carving cause in those days, I didn’t want to stick my hand inside the big, orange head.  You can’t convince me that it isn’t.  Well, think about it.  We spend years teaching kids that a jack-o-lantern is only for Halloween and it’s scary.

Course, on the ‘Net researching for topics back when I was first happily exploring this business of writing, I found out a bit more about “Jack-o-lanterns.”  And I still think that it’s an actual head we’re carving on.  Funny, how thoughts can get started in one’s mind as a child.  I now see the reason for “Watch what you say when around kids.”  Course then one runs into the problem of those kids finding their information from elsewhere and that info might not always be the thing you want them to learn.

I relegated the pumpkin business to the back of my mind and only bought pumpkin pie mix in a can for a number of years.  My sons, sad to say, had to learn bout carving them in school.  However, last spring, well, actually, it was in February, that I started researching gardens.  I put pumpkins on the list of plants I wanted to grow.  Some might have grown if I hadn’t got distracted with my mother walking on right in the middle of growing season.  When I finally checked on the garden, there were a few giant size zucchinis, three giant sunflowers and tall corn stalks.  Very little else.  What?  No pumpkins?  Hahahohoheehee!

Right in the middle of setting up my garden, which was a little late anyway, I’d had to go to my Writing Conference for a week.  Since I’d planted the seeds, thought if I put plastic down, it’s keep the birds away.  Got back and found out that I had lost the markers for where my plants were.  And grass had gotten in the garden.  So I let it grow and said we’d see what’s what when ever whatever grew.  So, yep, no pumpkins.  Well, least not where I’d planted them.  I found one tiny little pumpkin down under the apple tree.  And no other squash grew.  Aw, well, there's always this summer. Yes!