Ginormous Harvest Today

Four foot-long cukes and four foot-long squash.

What happens in the garden when the gardener gets laid up and can't get out to garden? Worse yet, what happens when the quick-growing poke weed jumps up so tall that it towers over the squash and cucumbers, providing cover so a few of the fruit can go rogue? That's right, the gardener reaps a harvest that is so enormous, so ginormous, so beyond big, that it borders on the obscene.

Today, after wrestling with about 25 four foot tall poke weed plants, yanking them free of the soil and bagging their sorry hides, I was able to pull from deep under the yellow squash plant four amazing foot-long wonders. After that, I freed up four more cucumbers. Two of them had grown so large that they'd given up being cukes, having turned from green to a scary pale yellow that made them look more like an alien-like birthing pod.

Preliminary research seems to be indicating that this biomass of vegetation is going to be either too course, too bitter or too seedy to eat. But I'm not inclined to give up just yet. So I've found a buttermilk squash recipe that calls for two-and-a-half pounds of yellow squash (One down, three to go.) and I've got another cucumber and yogurt soup recipe that calls for three "large" cukes. (Hmm, I wonder if that means some 36 inches of cucumber, the length of my three-foot-longs laid end to end.). We're also going to have some sliced cukes marinated in balsamic vinegar, more bathed in ranch dressing, and still more dipped in a vinaigrette.


And I may have to make more squash bread and stick those in the freeze with the half-dozen that are already there. On the other hand, if you're reading this, maybe I could foist a two-pound squash off on you? If nothing else, you could try hoisting them numerous times as a healthy knew way to build up your biceps. The Putterer