Imade the mistake of leaving the squash plant alone for a couple
of days.
Imade the mistake of leaving the squash plant alone for a couple of days.
Squash doesn’t seem to need a whole lot of care in this climate. Just plant and get out of the way. At least, that is, until the squash actually start arriving. Then, benign neglect, as I learned this weekend, will leave you up to your eyeballs in squash.
Sure, I went out every day to check on the garden, and I peered through the leaves of the squash plant, which have grown waist-high, to see if anything needed harvesting. All I could see were some little baby squash, so I left them, content that I had done all the examination necessary.
But Sunday, after eating all the squash we had already harvested, I went out to see if those little baby squash had grown at all. This time, I actually parted the leaves of the plant and was stunned by what I saw. It was a regular squash fest in there.
There were the little baby squash I had seen earlier, and then there were the monster squash – the ones that had been hiding under the leaves and behind branches until they just got too big to conceal themselves anymore. It was time to start hacking.
I started with the ones that were easy to reach, and got a modest pile of squash going. But little did I know that harvesting squash would be an activity better suited to someone with a machete who could blaze a trail to where the vegetables lie. I managed to collect a few more of the yellow vegetables without breaking branches or trampling leaves, but I had to contort myself so that I wouldn’t step on any of the surrounding plants and to minimize the prickles from the squash leaves scratching my arms, all while trying to avoid pitching head-first into the plant.
I repeated this stretching exercise several times, winding up with a final count of about 15 squash, most of them rather large, and not including the two pairs that were freakishly fused. I think the squash were running out of room in there.
I also discovered what seemed like a bustling city inside the squash plant. There were spiders and snails and flies and, alas, aphids. On one of my plunges into the squash plant, I looked up from the harvest just in time to see a squash flower that was inches from my face begin to pulsate. I froze, horrified but unable to look away. Much to my relief, a bee emerged from the flower, and I remained frozen until it flew away, because I didn’t want to get stung. I decided that was a good time to stop the day’s collecting activities.
Besides, I’ve got plenty of squash to keep me busy for now.
