HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

The morning harvest

Remember that old rhyme from childhood?...How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. Sounds a bit like someone's garden had some romantic fantasies.

My garden has no romantic fantasies, but I definitely had the fantasy of having a rich crop of black zucchini.

Surprise! Vines going every which way--so much so that I had to daily keep them from taking over tomato plants and other squash. Everything about this particular crop seemed odd to me,but I forged ahead. After all, the seed package said "black zucchini." I was even starting to think maybe my brown thumb had grown green after all.

BUT...I got a big surprise when the first fruit of the vine showed up. "Hmmmm," I thought to myself. "That looks oddly like a cucumber." And, sure enough, picked and cut open, the wonderful smell of cucumber reached my nose.

So no zucchini? I'm gonna try to find some starts somewhere and we shall see, though I pretty much will have to do container plants as garden space is cucumber laden now. Who knew? And, oddly, this is not the first strange outcome in the summer's garden. One of my calebecitas turned out to be a round globe squash. 

Still, since the summer's creativity has turned mostly away from art forms and into the garden, why not have surprise? After all, that is one of the greatest thrills of creativity for me. How about you?

No pretty maids all in a row, but cucumbers anyone?