An introduction and also a funny story. 

Also kind of a metaphor for how my life pretty much works.

I moved to Ohio last year, so this summer was my first summer in the new house. The new house doesn’t really have a front yard. It is a very narrow house with a covered porch and below that a garage door that connects to the basement. An 8’x8’ raised flower bed runs alongside the porch steps at about waist height. The new house is in a neighborhood full of gorgeous front yard gardens – urban farming is all the rage where I live – and I wanted to join the party. I knew just what I wanted. I wanted lots of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and squash – the yellow crook-neck kind you use for squash casserole because squash casserole is my very favorite thing in the entire world.

We went to the farmer’s market on a Saturday in May and a nice farmer man had lots and lots of healthy looking seedlings in plastic crates clearly labeled in front. Summer sweet peppers, Japanese eggplant, chocolate cherry and sungold tomatoes, and summer squash – everything we were looking for. We carefully arranged all of our new babies in the cardboard flat he provided and carted them home to lovingly plant them in the flower bed.

Our babies were thrilled with their new home in our front yard garden. The tomatoes sprouted up tall and proud and had to be tied to the railing of the steps for support. The eggplant and peppers flowered. We kept the herbs well-trimmed and they bushed out as desired. Lemon basil is one of the most delicious things you will ever smell. The squash plants had some trouble taking off, but eventually they grew strong base stems and began to vine and flower as well.

Along with our lovely seedlings, we hung baskets of a mix of vivid pink and purple flowers from the porch roof, and those flowers, along with the wonderful herbs, helped to attract all of the bees and butterflies we needed to turn the blooms into fruits. It also attracted hummingbirds, which don’t help the garden but they’re amazing little buggers.

The peppers started out as tiny green bumps pushing out from a closed bud. The eggplant pushed forth tiny, oblong, deep-purple blobs from deep purple pods. They looked like alien egg pods growing. They're amazing. The tomatoes just went nuts with the fruiting.

The squash vines grew out from the bed and down along the driveway in front of the garage door. They reached out forward between the herbs and toward the street. They worked their way backwards and behind the tomatoes to climb the porch rails. And bloomed like CRAZY. And then finally, FINALLY, the squash blooms began to sprout tiny fruits – tiny, green striped, very-not-crook-neck shaped fruits.

I took a picture of the very-not-crook-neck fruit and posted it to my Facebook page. It was agreed among my Facebook friends that it very much resembled a butternut squash. But…..I didn’t plant butternut squash. I didn’t WANT butternut squash. I like eating butternut squash but I hate trying to cook it because I do not have the table saw one needs to get through one. I’m not a fan of cooking winter squash in general. And dammit, I wanted that yellow squash for casserole!

I did some research. Summer squash, like yellow squash and zucchini, do not vine. They bush. Winter squash, like butternut and acorn, vine. More evidence that I was not growing casserole squash. And then, upon further examination – well, upon actually bothering to look – I found the little plastic thing you stab in the dirt by a seedling to identify it – the one that comes with the seedling when you buy it.  It said butternut. The nice farmer man had mislabeled the crate of squash and I hadn’t bothered to look at the tag. Typical.

Our butternut squash thrived. Our fellow urban-farming neighbors often walked up and down the block and complimented us on our lovely garden. We ended up getting about five healthy, heavy, hard-fleshed fruits from our vines. I gave them all away to the fellow-farming neighbors. We bonded. Now we’re friends.

And that’s how my life goes – not as planned because most of the time I’m just not paying attention, but not badly either because the little things I don’t plan for end up pretty cool anyway. And my neighbors promised me pie. So there’s that.