The difficulty level in this climate of growing zucchini is about the same level as you would have growing a weed.  Anne maintains that one plant will feed a family of four. My friend, planted twenty-six. Despite evidence to suggest otherwise is she is surprisingly quite sane. I planted four. I suspect I planted them to make it look in my garden, albeit deceivingly that there is abundance to be found behind my fence. Today, there were five ready to pick. Good heavens, what am I going to do with it all?

My tomatoes are doing well (ish) there are lots of green tomatoes but I am worried about their size for this time of year. Maybe they are all late producers.. Not really sure, but I am nowhere near picking fresh red tomatoes.

There are lots of pumpkins and although they require a lot of my precious water I really want to try to keep them alive, as we like to enjoy them all winter long. I love the taste of pumpkin spice muffins, pumpkin spike cake, pumpkin pie, anything really with a pumpkin flavor I consider a welcome treat on a stormy winter day.

Anne showed me today how to scratch my grand-daughters name into the skin of the small young pumpkin. Apparently, as the pumpkin grows the name will expand and scar into the side of the gourd. It’s probably a premature trick for my grand-daughter this Thanksgiving as she will only be 13 months old but I wanted to see how it worked. Have any of you tried it? Give it a try, and tell me how you make out. Anne tells the story of a friend who misspelled her grand childs name so make sure you don’t screw it up!!!

We have three baby fish in the garden pond bringing the total to twenty. Five of them are three years old and look more like Koi than gold-fish. The raccoon thinks they are there for his midnight snack and he has been determined in his attempts.

We went up to the garden this week and the rocks had been moved around the pond. The fish aren’t that strong so we checked the fencing. At one corner of the garden all of the plants had been trampled, the pear tree had been vandalized and there was a large hole under the fence. On the outside of the fence the five-pound boulders we had placed along the fencing had been picked up and moved aside. Little brat.  Although he trashed that corner of the garden he was unsuccessful in his fish snacking adventure. Raccoons can’t fish with one hand. E built the pond in a manner that the raccoon can’t dip both hands into the water at once so … ha ha we are smarter…..

We have to go to town on Wednesday for puppy shots and we realized that we had too many other stops for one day to handle them with sanity. E made an extra trip today to take care of half of them. I was ever so grateful to stay behind out of the 30 degree heat and watch the dogs. I spent the day in the shade transcribing notes and enjoying sweet peace and quiet.

E came home after six hours of running around town and collapsed

in a heap