August | 2024 | wordsfromanneli

August 19, 2024
by wordsfromanneli 32 Comments

Squish, Squash

Why would a vegetable that has such a hard skin be called a squash?

These are only a few of the squashes ripening in my garden. I have no idea what they are called, but I know they all taste good.

About four years ago, a friend gave me an assortment of squashes just like these because he had so many in his garden and gladly shared them. I happily made meals with them and enjoyed them so much, I decided to save some of the seeds to plant in my own garden the next year.

I got a few of them planted and was happy to see them sprout at last, but in the time it took for them to sprout, many squash plants sprang up in my freshly rototilled garden patch. How did that happen? I had spread the contents of my compost barrel over the ground before rototilling, and in the compost were many seeds from the squash I had cleaned and eaten that previous winter.

For the third year in a row now, I have had volunteer squash plants growing in my garden. I didn’t have the heart to pull them out, except to thin them a bit.

Now there are so many squashes of all the types my friend gave me, that the plants are “squashing” each other.

… Guess what I’ll be eating all winter …

Nothing squishy, nothing squashy,

Simply bring them in to washy,

Cut in half and scoop the seeds,

Feed the compost what it needs.

Place them on a baking sheet,

Spread with butter smooth and neat,

Salt and pepper if you like,

Gives the taste a little spike.

Easy peasy supper treat,

Hot and filling, can’t be beat,

If you want a next year’s crop,

Fill your compost to the top.

When the springtime songbirds sound,

Toss that compost on the ground,

Mix it in and water well,

And the squash will grow like heck.

August 16, 2024
by wordsfromanneli 30 Comments

Discretion and Valor

If you love fishing and camping in solitary places, you might want to scout out your surroundings, before you go too far afield.

This mama grizzly and her two cubs (probably last year’s) like fishing and hanging out in solitary places too.

The fact that she still has both cubs could possibly mean that the fishing has been good and that mother and cubs are healthy and doing fine. However, people and grizzlies in close proximity to each other are usually not a good combination. I hope, for the grizzlies’ sake, that there is no interaction that will cause them to be trapped and “dispatched.”

These bears are on Vancouver Island where grizzlies are making an appearance in the last few years. They swim over from the mainland, island hopping to shorten the distance they need to swim. It’s possible that in this case the mother is trying to keep her cubs safe from male grizzlies who would be a threat to them. In some species, the male would kill the young to gain access to the mother and “have some fun with her.” The big cats are another example of this.

This photo was taken by a friend of the Captain near a favourite fishing spot. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor, hence the blurry quality of the photo. If the photographer had gone closer, the picture might have been clearer, but he might not have been around long enough to send it.

I think the friend probably decided to take a raincheck on fishing that day.