CUCURBITA THINKING

WHAT IS IT?

Try to figure this one out  before checking the end of the blog.

       As the curious garden of 2016 comes to an end, I find that the bounty of garden art is enthralling.

Take the cucumber for instance. While preparing small pickling cukes trimmed on the ends for a remaining few jars, I noticed the charming flowerlet design on the green tips. Who did that? And

why?

       Walking through the outdoor market in late summer is a delight of color and shapes, like the great variety of pumpkins at the Tomac Pumpkin Patch booth in the East Lansing, Michigan. That's Sarah waving over the menagerie of globes. The Tomac farm also has a festival October 15 called Pumpkin Chucking where the challenge has grown over the years with participants using great effort to chuck their pumpkin. Check their facebook for details.

       I learn a lot from these outdoor market excursions (what a great time to be alive). For instance cucumbers and pumpkin squashes are part of the same Cucurbita family (Cucurbita in Latin means gourd). My mind wants to throw out a stream of comments on family differences, but I'll let you do that. 

       The star form at the top of the blog is not a Cucurbita, but it does help one kind of cucurbita to become beautiful and delicious. It is a dill blossom!  Here's how it becomes an artsy object:

VOILA!

       Thank you for visiting today. If you are looking for an enjoyable read about gardens and animals and making brooms, check out our Amazon.com memoir:  A Homestead Decade, How CrunchyGranola Changed My Life  , Amazon e-book, cheap, $2.99.  Happy end of summer, Helene