Thursday, September 6, 2012

To Squash or not to Squash

I love zucchini.  The bigger the better.  I love zucchini baking:  Lemon Poppy seed loaves, spice cake, chocolate cake.  I like them stuffed with ground beef, and fried like green tomatoes.  I want to try zucchini lasagna.  Well, DH doesn't like them stuffed (too watery, even though I baked them first).  So when I found a few baby acorn squashes and picked them to allow the bigger ones to mature, I wondered if I dared cook them after the stuffed zucchini effort.  I took off some of the peel, scooped out some of the seeds, cut them into 1" pieces, and sauteed them in light margarine with LOTS of pepper.  He loved these.
Mother Nature sure has it figured out, with our help, to get from this:
 to this:
 to this
 Our one and only pumpkin, but since it's about 20 lbs, that's probably plenty.  Do you see potential Pumpkin Cheesecake here?  (a close cousin to the squashes).
 We have a bounty of Acorn Squashes, but not one Butternut.
 And at least a dozen Spaghetti squashes.  These will go well with sauce from our bounteous tomato crop.
May I interest you in some free Zucchini?

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Who needs a rain dance when I have Round-Up?

Kubota Man set up the little old garden tractor and the estate sprayer with a 25 gallon tank:  I was declaring war on weeds.  Round-Up and a spray wand are my weapons!
I was underambitious, since I told him to mix up 10 gallons of solution--that got me halfway through the new saskatoon/haskap/currant/gooseberry/jostaberry/raspberry patch.  So I mixed up 25 gallons, did a strip alongside the greenhouse and finished the big patch--and it looks like rain.  Hope it holds off for a couple of hours.  That was a lot easier than carrying and pumping by hand.
Next time it will be neglected flower beds--but I will have to dress up the shrubs and perennials in pails and plastic garbage bags.