my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini
i feel like i should’ve added more context when i posted this. my grandparents live in a rural area where farmers and casual gardeners alike are, at this point in the year, suddenly being hit with unexpectedly abundant zucchini crops. there aren’t just some random vandals leaving zucchinis in people’s cars for the hell of it, this is the work of some very exasperated, probably very elderly, folks who have more zucchini than they know what to do with
Yep. You can also expect to find a bag of zucchini on your porch.
My grandfather once found his neighbor stealing his tomatoes out of his garden at three in the morning. Red-handed, with a basket of the nearly-ripened ones. He thought he was going to find gophers or something, but no, here’s Henry, taking his tomatoes. The best ones.
There was a long pause between them.
My grandfather (allegedly) said, “Henry… it’s OK. You can take some tomatoes if you want them.”
Henry sighed in relief.
“But,” my grandfather said, “you have to take two zucchini for every tomato.”
There was another long silence. “That’s a harsh bargain, John,” said Henry. “But I accept. I’ll tell Joe up the street, too.”
My grandfather said, “Tell Joe he needs to take three.”
a friend of my dad’s came by in the middle of the night, he seemed very nervous when my dad answered the door. he wouldn’t come inside but he leaned in and whispered to my dad in spanish, “i have some fresh grapes for you.” and then this happened:
the melon was a special bonus.
MY DREAM
A friend of mine lives in a rural area and he has been surrounded by zucchini for most of May, June, and July.
At one point he was so done with the whole zucchini madness that he came to classes actively begging people to “Please please please!! Take some my family’s damned zucchini!! I’ve been eating zucchini for weeks!! I’m going insane!!!”
Having grown up in a rural area and having come home to zucchini on the front step or in the mailbox, i find it highly amusing the OP had to clarify. I’m sitting here nodding “yup.”
I have a friend with a garden in Oregon who literally made Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies and sent them to me in Indiana. I texted her back “I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE”
I’m waiting for the day when someone will hear about my background in Botany and ask me for advice on what someone who’s just wanting to start exploring planting vegetables should try.
I know fuckall about gardening because my background is wild plants and not agriculture, but I’m gonna tell them
“Zucchini. Definitely try Zucchini. Just plant plenty of them and you’ll get a decent sized crop! They’re very rewarding to grow.”
It may be a bit of a long game, but I’ll enjoy their screams of despair from across the void as they realize that they will eat zucchini forever
This is NOT an exaggeration, guys. Zucchini (and most squashes, really) will outgrow you so fast. Let our tale be a caution– or an encouragement, whichever. You decide as you hear the story of Squish.
When we were so broke we had to choose between gas and store-bought-food (I think I was about 10?), we had a garden so we could eat regularly (we also had chickens and pigs and hunted, but that’s beside this point). One summer, we planted 6 rows of yellow squash and 6 rows of zucchini. Each row probably had 10, maybe 12 plants in it. We created this giant squash-block in our garden plot so it was all right there together in the middle, and the needier plants like tomatoes were on the outside of the whole plot. We thought we were clever, til the first crop started coming in.
The outside two rows of each squash, yellow and zucchini, were normal. High yield, of course (because squash), but standard size for both summer squash and Italian zucchini. The inner 8 rows, however, created this hybrid monstrosity that we called Squish. It was pretty– a nice swirly yellow and green combination that made it clear the squash and zucchini had interbred.
Squish became a living nightmare for us. Something about the hybridization caused them to forget how to stop growing, or at least how to grow at a normal rate because those suckers were longer than my dad’s forearm, and bigger around than my (albeit child-sized) thighs. They didn’t get all hard and nasty on the inside, either, for some reason, like most squash will at that size. And they just kept coming. I don’t even remember seeing that many flowers, but every day we were pulling upwards of 20lbs of Squish out of the garden, only for there to be more the next day, or sometimes by the end of the day if we harvested in the morning. I don’t know where they were hiding, but it was like some sort of squash portal had opened into our yard and started crapping out Frankenstein’s Squashes.
At first, it was great. We could eat all we wanted and not worry about rationing it. But the growing season in Arkansas is long, and we had incredible weather that summer, so those darn things kept alternating flowers and fruit. Pull off a few Squish, new flowers budded out, and they ripened super-fast in the heat. We were absolutely swimming in Squish, because they were so big that even gorging on them meant only 1 or 2 got eaten per meal. (I think I recall using a few particularly enormous ones as swords for a duel with my sister, if that says anything about their size. I cannot overemphasize how absolutely, heinously gigantic they were. You probably don’t believe me but I am not kidding. Those things were bigger than a newborn by several many inches and a couple pounds.)
We had (luckily) a big deep freezer, and someone gifted us a bunch of freezer ziploc bags, so we started chopping them up and freezing them as we pulled them off. We ran out of bags real fast, so we caved and bought a ton more. We filled that deep freezer near to bursting. It was probably 3-4 feet deep, (as I remember barely coming up to the edge of it), and at least 4-5 feet long, about 2.5 feet across, and we filled it to the top with Squish. And that’s while we’re eating fresh ones every day with dinner! But still more Squish came before the first frost, so we started packing the fridge. And my grandma’s freezer. And my grandma’s fridge. And feeding them to the pigs and chickens. And giving them away at church.
Do you realize how big a deal it is that people who were so broke that they had to choose between gas and the power bill were GIVING AWAY FOOD??? That’s how much gosh darn Squish we had. And little did I know, but apparently, my dad HATES squash. He only planted them because they were a cheap, quick source of food and my mom loved squashes. And he got stuck with the folly of his decisions. For over a year.
Yep. We had Squish in the freezer for over a year. Eating it regularly. It lasted for over a year. A family of 5, plus often feeding my grandmother, we ate off a single garden’s haul for over a year. Of just the Squish. I tell you, if we’d had a farmer’s market back then, that Squish could probably have single-handedly lifted us out of poverty. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.
We never planted both again, probably because my dad would have combusted out of rage if he’d ever seen another Squish in his life. But man those were the days for thems of us what loved squash.
So survival tip: If you need an absolute crapton of food, plant you a row of yellow squash and a row of zucchini, and keep that pattern going for as many rows as you like. You too can drown in Squish and love it.
Oh wow.
@deadcatwithaflamethrower I’m both laughing, and wondering a) if you have any squash allergies and b) what the Maine growing season is like
You are born with the ability to see whether people listen more often to the angel or the devil on their shoulder, based on the opacity of each- if they listen more to the angel, it’s more solid and the demon is more transparent, and vice versa. You recently met a guy online and you’re finally going to meet. You go in for a handshake and glance at his shoulders, but you can’t see the angel. Only a solid demon.
Run. That’s my first thought and it keeps playing in my head over and over again. Run!
“You OK?” asks the man before me.
I realize I’ve been standing frozen, probably looking spooked. “Yes,” I fake what I hope is a convincing smile. I look back at his right shoulder, there’s nothing there, then to his left shoulder where a solid colored devil rests.
As he turns to our table I glance over the restaurant to make sure my powers are still working. There’s a woman one table away with a transparent devil and a translucent angel, she listens to the angel more. The woman across from her has a devil that’s translucent, she listens to it a little more than she should.
I’ve had this power my whole life, to see which side one listens to, but never before have I seen a completely solid devil, never before have I seen the angel completely gone…
Run!
Turning back to him I seen he’s pulled my chair out for me, watching me expectantly.
I could run now but what if he follows? Maybe it’s best I don’t tip him off, assuming I haven’t already, and sneak out while he’s not looking.
“Thank you,” I sit down.
He sits across from me and looks down, pulling on his long sleeves. “Order whatever you want,” he mumbles, “don’t pay attention to the price.”
“Oh, OK thank you.” I can barely pay attention to the menu. I glance over the restaurant, planning an escape route from the restroom.
“It was at 5:50,” he says, picking right up from where our last conversation online left off.
“I watched that video a dozen times and couldn’t see it.”
As we talk he seems just like the shy sweet boy I met online but then I glance at the devil on his shoulder and remember to be scared.
I’m looking at his shoulder so often that he glances back to see what I’m looking at. Worried about it I glance down and gape; on his arm a cut peeks out from under his sleeve.
He sees me seeing it and panics, pulling his sleeves down.
My gaze falls to the table and we sit there in silence.
This whole time I’ve been avoiding the people with the more solid devils because they listen to them more, I never questioned what the devils were saying. His devil isn’t telling him to hurt me, it’s telling him to hurt himself, that he’s worthless and doesn’t deserve me; and me acting scared of him isn’t helping.
“Don’t listen,” slips out before I’ve finished getting my thoughts together. I take in a long breath and speak slowly. “Don’t listen to the voice that tells you you’re useless, that you’ll never make a difference… You’ve made a huge difference to me.”
I risk looking up and see him teary eyed. “Thank you,” he whispers, and beside his head a barely visible angel fades back into existence.
Thank you so much for doing this prompt @hannahcbrown!
To all the amigos out there, know that you are loved ❤️
Hey, do you know that feeling of hitching up a long skirt so you don’t fall on your face when walking upstairs, and then you immediately become a wretched yet resolute Jane Austen character? It’s a universal thing, right?
It’s like resting a laundry basket against your hip and suddenly you’re a long-suffering peasant woman, wondering if you’ll survive the winter.
so I work at a library now and during training we were shown each section and how they’re organized bluh bluh normal stuff, until we got to the 680s and my boss sighed at this shelf nearly busting from the weight of a shit ton of yarn books. now you may be wondering “how much is a shit ton of yarn books exactly max???” well let’s just say it’s about 2 shelves worth crammed onto one.
so when we got to this area my supervisor looked at us new pages and said in the most serious voice, “if anyone EVER gives you book donations never EVER accept donations of yarn books. EVER.” and we all laughed but deep down in the pit of my stomach I knew that was not a joke.
fast forward to a month later (today) and my shift starts pretty normally, I’m casually chatting with my co worker about video games and sorting books in the workroom when this couple walk into our workroom with big boxes saying they wanted to donate some books. so my coworker nods and says something about just leaving them there and he’ll grab our manager. so they put down these boxes and leave. so my manager comes along exclaiming how nice it is to get such a big donation and so she walks to the boxes, opens them, and starts shouting “JAMES GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW JAMES IT HAPPENED AGAIN” and so now I’m interested and I walk over and it just looks like boxes filled to the brim with books until I see the books all had library stickers on them and all have the numbers 680. so james comes running over and sees them and drops to his knees and starts shaking his head.
so then we got the details. apparently all libraries in my city all have too many yarn books and since you can technically check out a book and return it to any library and they’ll just shelve it there, all libraries just try and get rid of the books by tricking other libraries into taking them in. ways of this happening is staff from one library checking out the maximum amount they can of yarn books and dropping books around another library, or just viciously shoving these books through our returns, and now this, and apparently it’s a full out war with war maps and planning sheets written inside these yarn books. so please for the love of god never donate yarn books to your local library
Ahhhhh I also work at a library and this applies to all craft books. The 700-760 section is ridiculous. Plus they tend to be weird shapes/sizes which makes the mess worse
A witch puts a spell on a girl, a sleeping spell that promises the girl shall wake through true love’s kiss. Men come and kiss her. She slumbers. Women come and press their lips to hers, but still she sleeps. Many years past, and the girl remains still. One bright morning, a lost little boy finds her resting spot and clears the dust and grime from her face. He offers her a kiss on her forehead, and her eyes flutter open. She never feels romantic love for a man nor a woman, and she cares for the boy until the day she dies.
A young woman is imprisoned in a castle by a monstrously formed prince. The servants of the castle hope for them to fall in love, and when the spell is broken they assume their prayers have been answered. They are all surprised, but nonetheless pleased, when it is revealed to them that the young woman and prince are the truest of friends, and nothing more.
They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen, a woman who is incapable of loving. She is unmarried, she has no consorts, and she wishes for no partner. She is the wretched queen, the heartless queen. She must hate her daughter, for her daughter is beautiful, and women are incapable of liking another woman who’s prettier than themselves. It must be for this reason that the princess was sent away, not for how she was attacked by a man in the woods. They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen because she cannot love. The queen loves her daughter, and that is enough for them both.
There lives a prince who is forced to choose a bride at the ball. He meets many beautiful women, but find none which he loves. He spies one in a gorgeous gown and wonder in her eyes, and he dances with her all night long. The kingdom is sure he has found his bride. When the clock strikes midnight he tells her how he will never love a woman, or a man, in the way he is expected to. The beautiful woman smiles and tells him she expects nothing from him. The next morning the prince and the beautiful woman are missing, having run off together to see the world. They leave their shoes behind in their haste.
Many kinds of love exist. It doesn’t all have to be romantic.
Steel Phoenix Studios 