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larryhammerInspired by this comment, a family story.
My father, a farm boy, is a vegetable gardener. As an educator, he's interested in heirloom varieties, and as an organic chemist, in growth hormones -- a mix that has produced some ... interesting tomatoes, but that's neither here nor there. Not when there's his history with squashes.
When I was young, Dad planted zucchini for the first time. That first year, he played it safe and planted seven hills.
I will now pause to let anyone with zucchini experience recover enough to climb back into their chairs.
For those without, let's just say that zucchini plants are notoriously productive. And these hills, he'd fertilized with his best compost. At peak production, which lasted over a month, we were harvesting a couple squashes the size of my thigh every day. My mother's considerable cooking skills couldn't cope -- a double-batch of zucchini bread only disposes of so many, and can be given away to only so many neighbors. Not even forcing zucchini on all his graduate students was enough to keep up. Everyone became thoroughly sick of the stuff. It was a plague of zucchini.
You laughing guys back yet? Good.
Anyway, during Passover, I'm reminded of that summer. I never mention this out loud, because it would trivialize the Seder, but I sometimes silently alter the lyrics of the Haggadah's Frog Song:
But that's not the punch line of the story. See, the next year, my father thought he'd learned his lesson and planted only two hills.
"Only."
---L.
My father, a farm boy, is a vegetable gardener. As an educator, he's interested in heirloom varieties, and as an organic chemist, in growth hormones -- a mix that has produced some ... interesting tomatoes, but that's neither here nor there. Not when there's his history with squashes.
When I was young, Dad planted zucchini for the first time. That first year, he played it safe and planted seven hills.
I will now pause to let anyone with zucchini experience recover enough to climb back into their chairs.
For those without, let's just say that zucchini plants are notoriously productive. And these hills, he'd fertilized with his best compost. At peak production, which lasted over a month, we were harvesting a couple squashes the size of my thigh every day. My mother's considerable cooking skills couldn't cope -- a double-batch of zucchini bread only disposes of so many, and can be given away to only so many neighbors. Not even forcing zucchini on all his graduate students was enough to keep up. Everyone became thoroughly sick of the stuff. It was a plague of zucchini.
You laughing guys back yet? Good.
Anyway, during Passover, I'm reminded of that summer. I never mention this out loud, because it would trivialize the Seder, but I sometimes silently alter the lyrics of the Haggadah's Frog Song:
One day when Pharaoh awoke in his bedBecause, yeah, it was like that.
There were zucchini on his head
There were zucchini in his bed
Zucchini on his toes
And zucchini in his nose.
Zucchini here, zucchini there,
Zucchini piling everywhere!
But that's not the punch line of the story. See, the next year, my father thought he'd learned his lesson and planted only two hills.
"Only."
---L.