Oh! to be blessed with a friend who, despite brisk spring air, spends hours planting hope in dirt that may not yet have reached an optimum growing temperature.
Who mounds the dirt carefully and slips in a thin oval seed.
Who worries that one seed might not germinate or that the voracious squirrels scurrying across winter-dry grass might discover this smooth, tear shaped gem (having forgotten where the stash of black walnuts was buried last fall) and, as insurance, slips another seed into the soil.
Oh! to be blessed with friends whose short-term memory of last summer’s vibrant bounty is forgotten when planting zucchini.
Along with missing rhubarb with this move to Solstice Place, we have missed the delicate flavor of garden fresh zucchini lightly sautéed in Palestinian olive oil with herbs from our backdoor pots. I have even wondered how we will make it through a winter without a frozen zucchini bread to thaw and toast in December. But, I need not have worried as a friend blessed us with the fruits of his summer harvest. And yes – technically, zucchini is a fruit as it develops from the flower of the plant and contains reproductive seeds – but whether fruit of veggie it is certainly best when converted into Chocolate Chip Pecan Zucchini Bread.
Delicious!
And with more thoughts on this abundant summer wonder, an excerpt from New Lines for Fortune Cookies by James Masao Mitsui:
If you feel like you are getting old,
secretly plant zucchini in your neighbor's flowerbeds.
Bibliographic credit: James Masao Mitsui, New Lines for Fortune Cookies from his collection From a Three-Cornered World. University of Washington Press, © 1997.
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