vom_marlowe

Look, I'm getting desperate over here.  I now have NINE tromboncinos lurking on my damn kitchen table, and this is after I gave away several.  The vines have spread so far that they've climbed over my bean bed, through a tomato patch, and out the other side.  One vine has a runner that is, my hand to god, a good twenty feet long.  It has nearly reached the fence line and appears to be headed for the neighbor's house.

Each of these long trailing vine-fiends has baby squash on them.  I saw one of the rabbits go in the patch, but I haven't seen it come out.  Maybe the squash ate them.  Maybe the rabbits hollowed one out to build a home.  I fear the dog will approach too closely and be nabbled up, and he's a good eighty pounds.  These suckers have to be feeding off something.

Some of the squash in my kitchen are four pounds EACH.  Others are "only" two and a half pounds.  People, I have nearly forty pounds of squash here.  Half of which I picked yesterday. 

I have so far made:
Grilled squash
Squash lasagne (with squash "noodles")
Boiled squash
Squash muffins, squash pies
Squash bread
Side-squash
Squash salads
Squash kebabs
Squash sliced, breaded, baked, and made into zuke sticks with dipping sauce

I instituted a one squash per person per day rule, but it isn't helping.  The squashy fiends have far-outstripped our current nomming efforts, and I've started trying to feed them to the dog, who is doing his best to help out, but he's getting on in his years, and he told me he can only manage half a squash if I add some butter to it and give him time to gnaw them because his teeth aren't what they used to be.   

What am I going to do?  I looked out this morning, and even from my porch, I could see two more light green squash lighted up like mini-lanterns, ready to be picked.  Tomorrow, they'll probably weigh another pound. 

Help. Help.

Pls send recipes knthnxbai

So we're having the painters come to do the trim on the places we can't reach.  That means that they must be able to, you know, actually reach the trim.

The people who owned the house before us were utterly clueless.  Examples include but are not limited to: spilling a bucket of paint on the floor and leaving it there to dry, jerry-rigging their own electrical system in a way that made the electrician scream and leap backwards, hammering a plank of wood on the floor (no, I don't know why), putting bright fish wallpaper boarders on poop brown paint, and planting a black walnut, of all things, six inches from the house's foundation. 

Uh, yeah.

So. 

They also allowed a Dr Huey rose bush to grow to a height of at least eight feet tall and about four, no six, feet wide.  That sucker is HUGE.  It's also scraping against the house, which is a major house no-no. 

I love roses, don't get me wrong.  But I love my house's siding more.  I consulted a friend about pruning it, and she said I probably couldn't kill it if I tried, and that Dr Huey was notorious for being, well, not just hardy but indifferent to rain, sleet, hail, sun, and the occasional act of god. 

So last night I went out, wearing rose bush gloves (they're more like gauntlets, to be honest) and a chambray shirt to cover my arms, and did my best to prune it. 

I am now limping, scratched, covered in bandaids, sore, and grumpy.  There's an enormous pile of rose wood that refused to fit into the yard waste bags without poking me in the face, so it's just going to have to be taken away in bundles. 

The damn rose: caught my hair, poked through heavy leather gloves to gouge the back of my hand, ow ow ow, bruised my thigh, scratched my scalp, pricked my wrist (through leather AND canvas, the fiend), and generally caused havoc.  The clothes I was wearing are a dead loss.

Did I mention that it was 104 out?  And that was when it was cooling off.

I staggered back inside to lick my wounds and take a cold bath.  Except it's been so hot that we no longer have cold water.  It's luke warm, even on pure cold. 

But the painters can get to the house.  Which is something.  I guess.

*wanders off to apply more disinfectant to yet another thorn wound*