derien | neighbors and squash (Reply)

Had tea with my neighbor, Bev, yesterday, and got my dog time in with her sweet labrador. Bev has a lovely house, crowded with antiques but always neat as a pin when I've visited. She swears it isn't like that normally, but I take that with a grain of salt because she's said that when she visits my place. Neat as a pin is not something which generally happens at any place I live.

Bev used to be the Historical Society Liason to the town Planning Board, but has recently given up any activity which takes her in contact with the town offices, because according to her they apparently don't read the ordinances they're supposed to be following, and she just doesn't need that stress in her life at her age. She wants to spend more time with her husband, Dick, who hasn't been doing well. She said that in an undertone, as he was in the other room at the time, one of his brief forays into the house. He mostly lives outdoors, taking care of the cows. So I don't know yet what might be not okay, but it seems he's not going to let it change the habit of his lifetime. And he was the one who joked that I'd have to tie Eor to a chair to stop him working outdoors after his heart attack.

I just made eight trips to the compost with the delicata squash we grew last summer. I thought I recalled that we harvested around 60, but it must have been more because even if I only took five in each trip that would be 40, and there are 17 left, and I know I gave away quite a few and I think it was a couple of months there that we ate two squash every week. Moral: we won't plant seven delicata squash vines again.

Of course we probably won't ever have to plant them again at all, because they'll be growing feral all over the property after we spread this compost,. and probably on the neighbors' properties as well because the racoons like them. Our first one grew feral from compost we'd bought.

And why have I saved the last 17 and didn't just take them to the compost with the rest? Well, they're not rotten yet, and that first delicata we ever had we didn't even start to eat until March, so they're probably still edible. Also, I postholed up to my knees in the snow numerous times during that eight trips out there and my knees are not too damned happy with me at the moment. It's lovely outside, 50 degrees or so, but that makes the snow treacherous.