Taters Rule

Taters Rule

In my mother’s world, taters ruled.  The wonderful, glorious, versatile potato.  No meal was complete without them, be they boiled, mashed, baked, fried, shredded, riced, or made into soups, salads, and casseroles.  When I was a kid, I took taters for granted.  Potatoes were simply a part of life.  I gave no thought what-so-ever to the amount of work involved in getting them from the field to table.

Like most farm families, we raised our own potatoes.  Planting, cultivating, harvesting, and storing them were important and necessary tasks that helped carry us through the winter.  Most people planted potatoes on Good Friday.  I don’t know why, but assume it had something to do with the phase of the moon—the same reason the date of Easter varies from year to year.  From Good Friday through harvest, the crop required a great deal of work.  It began with poking ‘eyes’ in the ground on Good Friday, pulling weeds and picking off potato bugs (my least favorite task) throughout the summer, and digging them up in the fall.  Even after harvest, the work wasn’t finished.  We laid the newly dug potatoes out to dry and harden a couple of days before carrying them down the steps to the storage bins in the cellar.

Preparing them for the table was also a great deal of work.  Mom, like most cooks in the ’50s, managed to wash, peel, and cook them to perfection without the help of food processors and microwaves.  Whatever Mom decided to do with potatoes, the result was wonderful.  Mashed to perfection, fried to a crispy brown, or simply boiled, her potato dishes were superb.  Mom’s potato salad was always a hit at potlucks and family reunions.  I still use her secret ingredient and my version of Gramma Lill’s Potato Salad continues to be a family favorite.

My personal favorite was riced potatoes.  These were prepared in a potato ricer, which was a metal, sieve-like affair with handles.  Mom held the ricer, filled with boiled potatoes, over each plate and squeezed the handles together.  Streams of potatoes gushed out of the holes and looked like piles of rice on my plate.  Scrumpious gravy poured on top created a piece of heaven. A few years ago, I was thrilled to find a potato ricer at a flea market and my grandchildren are amazed when they see piles of fluffy potatoes on their plates.

Potatoes continue to be America’s favorite vegetable.  Every year we consume about 110 pounds of potatoes per person!  Even with this popularity, few of the younger generation realize how much work goes into growing potatoes.  Modern cooks can create all sorts of potato dishes by simply using a dried, canned, or frozen version and heating it in the microwave.  I’m glad I grew up in an earlier time and experienced the wonderful potato dishes created in my mom’s kitchen from spuds grown on our farm.  I count the humble potato among my most treasured memories.  In my world, taters still rule.

An Upscale Old-Fashioned Fourth

One year ago, I celebrated Independence Day  watching spectacular fireworks above the Golden Gate Bridge.   The night sky was alive with a dazzling display of red, white, and blue bursting into a shimmering panorama, which set against the backdrop of San Francisco Bay.  A live band played patriotic music, choreographed to hit a crescendo with each new flare. The pyrotechnics provided a stunning end to a most unusual Fourth of July.

 

The day began with a traditional Fourth of July parade in the sleepy seaside town of Sausalito.  We watched from the comfort of a gorgeous street-side park as bands, cyclists, floats, monkeys, and magicians performed with gusto on the street beside the deep blue water of the bay.  Later, we strolled along brick streets and enjoyed a touristy area filled with hundreds of people leisurely enjoying the day.

 

After taking a ferry across the bay to The Pier, we caught up with our host family (my son-in-law’s aunt and uncle) to enjoy an afternoon on a grassy knoll surrounded by shops to explore.  The crowd grew throughout the day, but it remained calm and everyone was in a festive mood.  I had a surreal feeling of being among thousands of friends.  Sitting on blankets spread upon the grass, we ate a homemade picnic supper and (sort of) enjoyed a concert.  (I say ‘sort of’ because rock music is not my thing, but people watching was great fun.)

Much to everyone’s delight (an immense relief) the always-present fog of the bay dissipated as the night skies cleared.  Promptly at 10:00 PM, the fireworks began and the customary ‘oooooh’s’ and ‘aaaaaah’s’ could be heard from people all around.  This, I remember thinking, is truly an old-fashioned Fourth of July.

Ah—yes—an “old-fashioned American Fourth of July.”  Having spent all of my previous Independence Day celebrations in the Midwest, I didn’t know what to expect on July 4 in California.  Looking back, I realize it was no different from any other I’d ever experienced—a few thousand more people, perhaps, and a bit more upscale, but still traditional and authentic.  Iowa—California—Texas—Rhode Island—it matters not.  We’re all Americans, and one day each summer we come together across this great land to celebrate our love of freedom.  God Bless America!

The Letter

One year ago, on November 26, 2012, I received a letter that rocked my world.  The return address was unfamiliar and I was stunned after reading the contents. The writer, someone named Berneice Quinn, contacted me because she had reason to believe her father and my father were one in the same.  In other words, she claimed to be my half-sister!

As might be expected, my immediate reaction was denial.  What a ridiculous notion! I had no sisters! The very idea was preposterous because, at 67 years of age, I knew exactly who I was, and I knew my family’s history—Dad, Mom, and three brothers, the oldest of whom was twenty-one when I was born.  That was it.  There were no other siblings, and certainly no sister!

Berneice grew up not knowing much about her father other than seeing his name on an old birth certificate—Benton Boeck.   Last November, her daughter found Benton’s name and mine listed in my recently deceased brother’s obituary which was posted online.  In her letter, Berneice shared a few sketchy details she’d learned about her father as she was growing up on her grandparents’ farm. Even in my state of denial, I realized the facts she shared sounded plausible—yes, this could have been my dad—but still, the very idea was outlandish.

After weeks of denial, emotional turmoil, questions, contact with distant relatives, and online research, my family concluded that the answer to Berniece’s inquiry was, “Yes.”  Benton Boeck was her dad—my dad and her dad are one in the same.  She is who she claims to be—Benton Boeck’s daughter—and my 94-year-old half-sister!

It still seems incredible to me, that my dad fathered a child when he was a teenager—years before he met my mother—and took that secret to his grave.  We will never know about the relationship between seventeen-year-old Benton and Martha, Berneice’s mother.  We will never know how their story stayed hidden for nearly 100 years; we can only speculate.  However, we cannot go back and change the past.

Furthermore, why would we want to change the past?  The story of whatever happened back then stays with Benton and Martha.  Our story begins with the letter I received from Berneice.   We’ve talked on the phone several times and met twice, once in her home and once in mine. Our extended families enjoyed getting acquainted at the annual Boeck family reunion this past summer.  All of the meetings had a magical quality, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  

In the year since receiving Berneice’s letter, many remarkable things happened.  Foremost, I learned I have a sister!  My only regret is not knowing her sooner.  Also, I reconnected with distant relatives after reaching out to ask if they had ever heard any of this about Uncle Ben.  (None could remember any rumors, with the exception of an elderly cousin now living in Texas.  When she was a child, she’d overheard a conversation at our grandmother’s house.)  I also realized what an amazing extended family I have as I watched their unconditional acceptance of Berneice and her children.  There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that we are, indeed, family.  

Bonnie

Berneice

The 7 Dips

 

I grew up on my parent’s farm south of Denison on Hwy 59 in the ’50s and ’60s.  A dirt road ran west to east directly across the highway from our front lawn.  Locals called it the “7 Dips,” named after the seven short hills that stretched the mile-and-a-half distance.  The road was not drive-able in snowy or rainy weather, but ‘Taking the Seven Dips’ was a popular fair-weather sport, more fun than a carnival ride—and much more dangerous.

We piled into our cars—the ‘60s vintage automobiles, affectionately known today as ‘boats’ and flew over the 7 Dips.  The trick was to ‘barrel it’ going up the hill and take your foot off the accelerator at the crest, giving riders the sensation of being suspended in air.  The first three hills were the most thrilling because they were shorter and came in quick succession.  The cars barely ‘touched ground’ before they flew over the next hills.  We were literally airborne and, miraculously, landed with four wheels on the road flying over the peak and down the other side.

The 7 Dips attracted thrill-seekers from all over Crawford County, particularly carloads of teenagers.  An obvious danger in the fast driving was crashing into an oncoming vehicle at the top of a hill.  Amazingly, I cannot recall this ever happening!  Usually, the only traffic during the day was an occasional farmer on a tractor. At night, headlights from oncoming cars headlights alerted drivers to move over toward the side of the road and stop until the oncoming vehicle had passed.

The biggest dangers lie in unsuspecting drivers not knowing what to expect at the bottom of the hills.  A small creek crossed the road at the bottom of one hill.  Here, drivers aimed their speeding vehicles between the rails of a narrow wooden bridge, usually overgrown with vines by late summer.  At the east end of the 7 Dips, the road ended abruptly with a sharp north turn connecting it to a gravel road.  Drivers who failed to slow down could find themselves landing in a pile of brush.  The west end of the road ended at Hwy 59, directly across from our farm.  I remember a few times when drivers missed the stop sign at night and their cars came to rest across the highway in the ditch in front of our house.  A couple of them even landed on our lawn in the middle of the night!

There were no ditches on either side of the old road because it was merely a path cut through the hills.  In the valleys, banks of shrubs grew high above the sides of the roadway, giving the impression of driving through a tunnel, especially on calm days when the wind didn’t carry the dust away.  Older cars lacked air-conditioning and everyone drove with windows open in the summer.  As we flew over the hills, clouds of dust engulfed the cars and sifted in through open windows.  However, even our coughing fits were not enough to deter us from the thrill of ‘taking the 7 Dips’ again and again.

Miraculously, there were no fatalities from our daredevil stunts—at least during the time that we lived there.  Today, the 7 Dips have disappeared and are nothing more than an overgrown fence line.  The old dirt path has faded into Crawford County history.  In my teen years, cruising the 7 Dips was great fun.  While I look back our stunts and smile, I’m also appalled to think of our utter lack of common sense. Now, I realize it’s only by the grace of God that I’m alive to tell this tale.  If my grandchildren read this piece someday, I add a caveat for them: “Do as Gramma said; not as Gramma did.”

From Beauty to Beast

Last week I heard a friend murmur, “I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore.”  That started me thinking…spring chickens…how many people even know what spring chickens are in this day of vacuum-sealed drumsticks, wings, and boneless chicken breasts?  Before the convenience of picking up a package of chicken from the grocery freezer, most farm families raised their own chickens.  It all began with the arrival of newly hatched chicks in April or May, hence, the term spring chicken.

The two-month production cycle from peep to chicken dinner was busy and began when Dad brought home two cardboard boxes filled with delightful, fluffy, yellow, day-old chicks cheeping loudly inside. The flat boxes had quarter-sized holes on the sides and in the lid, allowing air to reach the chicks while giving them openings to peek out with their downy little heads and pointy beaks.  A cardboard partition divided each box into two parts with 50 baby chicks stuffed into in each section.

The chicks hatched in an incubator and never knew a mother hen’s protection, so they needed extreme care.  The first rule of caring for peeps:  a chilled chick was a dead chick.  Immediately upon arrival, Mom carried them gingerly to the basement and placed them in a small, enclosed area that she’d prepared out of cut-up boxes. She’d suspended a heat lamp a foot above the chicks to keep warm as they began to explore their new world on spindly little legs.

The second rule of handling peeps: peeps could not tolerate handling.  The chicks were very delicate, and it was tempting to pick them up and feel their soft fuzz against my cheek.  However, even gentle touching bruised the tiny creatures and they could not survive if picked up often.  (Still today, I cringe when Easter season arrives and stores make baby chicks available to children…but I digress….)  After numerous reminders from Mom, I eventually learned not to pick them but just enjoy them from afar.

There was an important exception to the ‘do not pick up’ rule—teaching them to drink water.  Mom had to teach each of the 200 chicks to drink by picking them up individually and dipping their fragile beaks into the water. I remember feeling quite grown-up when Mom assigned me the important task of dipping each fuzzy head into the water and watching for the day to make sure all returned to drink again.

Once the chicks were eating, drinking, and adjusting to life, Dad moved them from the basement to a cornered-off area of the chicken coop, still warmed by a heat lamp and small enough to keep them confined for another week. In a couple of weeks, he turned them loose to roam the shed and adjoining fenced-in yard. By now, feathers replaced the yellow down, and the cute baby chicks had turned into gangly adolescents.

Fully feathered, they were soon well on their way to maturity.  When I was in high school, feeding and watering chickens was part of my morning chores in the summer.  I tried to do chicken chores early in the mornings before the dusty chicken house heated up. It was tricky to squeeze through the door while carrying a bucket of feed or water and not let any chickens escape.  Occasionally, one got loose and I spent the rest of the morning chasing it down with a catching hook as it ran in tall grass and flew into trees.

Chickens are notoriously flighty and my presence in the coop always caused a frenzy of squawking, running, and flapping wings.  This only increased the amount of dust and dander flying in the air and sent me into a coughing fit.  I tried to fill the feeders without taking a breath. Sometimes, I tried tying a red handkerchief bandana over my nose and mouth.  Either method was effective against breathing the polluted air of the chicken coop.

In two short months, the beautiful little peeps had transformed into feathered beasts with extremely unpleasant dispositions.  They wouldn’t allow anybody near them, they pecked when anyone got close, and they were far from anything one might consider cute.  These chickens were not the pristine white critters seen story books.  To put it mildly, they were dirty, ugly, and downright nasty.  It was always a relief when they reached maturity so we could be done with them.

The butchering process lasted a couple of days and extended family came to help. I’ll skip the gory details, but summarize by saying by saying the work was intense.  It took a crew of workers a couple of days to get the chickens caught, cleaned, cut-up, and frozen.  Over the years, I learned the entire process, beginning with picking feathers to the point of being able to quickly cut up chickens and get them in the freezer.

This is a simple skill I’ve had since I was a teenager, but now folks learn to do it via You-Tube videos!  Sadly, younger readers have no idea how the taste of factory-processed chicken pales in comparison to farm-grown.  However, readers like myself, who are no longer spring chickens, know exactly what I mean.

The Story Behind the Ad

Bonnie’s Blog Box is back online after a couple of months hiatus!  This post is a new genre for me–fiction.  This month my Writers Group was challenged to find an ad in the paper and write a piece of fiction telling the story behind it.  This is the story behind the ad I found ….

********

One year ago, Marcia Travers’ life seemed fairytale-perfect.  Her husband, world-famous plastic surgeon, Dr. Jonathon Travers, was a department head at the university hospital and his patients included the rich and famous.  The Travers’ lifestyle reflected those connections.  Marcia’s children were out of college, well into their own careers.  Social circles and volunteer activities filled her calendar.  Life was comfortable and perfect —or so she thought.

Everything changed at a luncheon with friends last November.  Following a hospital auxiliary board meeting, the doctors’ wives impulsively decided to stop at an out-of-the-way bistro before going home.  Marcia was quietly sipping her espresso and enjoying the friendly banter between two of her friends when she happened to glance at the couple seated at a table across the room.  Even though the man had his back to her, she recognized him.  Jonathon! Jonathon, supposedly out-of-town on business, sat there holding hands with a stunning blonde the age of his daughter and staring deeply into her azure eyes. Marcia stood, walked over to their table, and poured her espresso over Jonathon’s balding head, down the front of his Armani suit, all the way to the toes of his Wingtip shoes.  With Jonathon sputtering and the doctors’ wives gaping, she abruptly left the building and drove home.

The months following were a blur—the confrontation, the divorce, the slow realization that life as she knew it had ended.  After the messy court settlement, it became clear that Jonathon supported his lavish lifestyle far beyond what he could afford.  The yacht was on loan, the estate in the Hampton’s double-mortgaged, the cottage on Martha’s Vineyard foreclosed, and the ski villa at Lake Tahoe had a tax lien against it.  After all was said and done, Martha was left with little.

The title to her Lexis was solely in Jonathon’s name, as was all other property of value.  He’d seen to that over the years, with Marcia s none-the-wiser.  She’d been carefree about spending his money and never bothered to understand his finances.  Ironically, being the sole-owner also left Jonathon alone to deal with the horde of creditors descending on the Travers’ home following the divorce.  Marcia was free to walk away and start a new life.

Getting back on her feet would be difficult because she’d never finished college.  After getting her MRS Degree when she married a handsome pre-med student the summer after her junior year, she saw no need to continue with boring college classes.  Why would she?  She knew she could live comfortably on his income as a doctor, so she worked as a waitress to support him during his years of medical school, residency, and specialty training.  Now, faced with the prospect of supporting herself, she was too old to return to her waitressing career.  This morning she placed an ad to teach beginner-level piano lessons for $10 per hour.

Poetry Sampler

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Robert Frost

I dabble in poetry from time to time, and this month I hesitantly leave the safe haven of prose to share samples of my poems.  May the poetry lovers among you enjoy and the rest tolerate this divergence from the usual writing found here.

Tolerance

                                                 Ice

                                                 People

                                                          Wear the same

                                                          Eat the same

                                                          Do the same

                                                 Risk

                                                          Rejection

                                                          Suspicion

                                                          Ridicule

                                                 Friendship

                                                           Ice thaws

                                                           Drips away

                                                           Warmth grows

                                                 Understanding

 

       On Being Involuntarily Retired

                                                     Life’s twists and turns

                                                     Lead to unexpected places

                                                     RIF – the dreaded pink slip

                                                     Sudden unplanned ending

                                                   

                                                    Mourn for the past

                                                    Long for the old

                                                    The comfortable

                                                    The secure

                                                   

                                                    Give it up!

                                                    Let it go!

                                                    Fly!

                                                    Embrace the adventure!

 

                                                    A new start – a blank page

                                                    Creativity long stifled

                                                    Rekindled with the joy

                                                    Of new-found freedom

                                                  

                                                    Bonnie L. Ewoldt, 2010

Mixed Up Holidays

This October blog is dedicated to my brother,

Virgil Boeck,

September 4, 1924 – October 20, 2012

 

Are you ready? Today is October 31^st—Halloween, for those who may have been walking through stores since July 5 oblivious to mountains of candy displayed on end caps of aisles stocked with glittering orange and black decorations and spooky costumes.  The seasonal decorations miraculously appeared immediately after flags and fireworks disappeared.  Celebration of traditional American holidays has morphed into a mega-marketing campaign, woven seamlessly together to keep consumers in a perpetual state of stress.  Perhaps it’s time to come clean and be honest about it.  We no longer separate Valentines, Easter, and the Fourth of July.  October through December has become a marathon of decorating and shopping from Halloween through Thanksgiving past Christmas until New Years.  Our traditional holiday seasons have been replaced by one unending celebration, ValenEasFourHallowThanksMusYear. 

Starting in February, plastic red hearts are peeled off store windows while bunnies and baby chicks peek at us over the edges of baskets as we stroll through store aisles.  Just as we finish the last of the Easter ham, stores promote sales of hotdogs, marshmallows, Hershey bars, and beer.  While the last of the red, white, and blue bunting is being tossed into the sale aisle, ghosts and goblins start swaying in the breeze of ceiling fans above us in Wal-Mart.   Star Wars costumes and plastic pumpkins are in high demand today, but tomorrow they will fill the sale carts as turkeys and pilgrims take center stage.  Christmas is big, really big, in retail so it encroaches into Thanksgiving and Halloween turf extending on into summer.  The gardening section of the discount store disappears overnight to be replaced with tinsel, twinkling lights, and Santa Claus.  Red and green Christmas decorations mix with orange pumpkins and turkey feathers.  The non-stop marketing barrage ends with New Year’s banners, liquor sales, and magazine covers guilting us into making resolutions we know we can’t keep.

Perhaps we should take a collective deep breath, slow down, and think about this.  Are the holidays only marketing tools?  Are they meant to serve as continuing loop of advertising blitz?  Of course not!  From the sacred to the secular, each celebration comes with its own meaning and traditions.  We love our Easter hams and Thanksgiving turkeys.  Fourth of July fireworks and campfires are the highlight of summer.  Christmas wouldn’t be the same without festive trees, wrapped presents, and frosted cookies.  Unfortunately, because of media hype and revolving store displays, our traditional holidays are melting together into one ongoing, non-stop holiday, ValenEasFourHallowThanksMusYear.

ValenEasFourHallowThanksMusYear mixes all of our wonderful holidays into one long and stressful time of preparation.  While we cannot change the store displays or stop the evolution of holiday advertising, we can take control of our own holiday celebrations.  Instead of being stressed out over the trappings of each festivity, we should slow down and enjoy making memories by focusing on the people, remembering that friends and family more important than food and decorations.

My family just lost our anchor, my brother Virgil Boeck.  I could go on and on about what a great guy he was—family man, WWII vet, community and church leader, a man of integrity and honor.  But Virgil was more than that—he was a man with a big heart for people, always there with a listening ear or helping hand.  My brother loved all of the holidays (with Christmas being his favorite) and any other excuse for a family get-together.

With the upcoming holiday season, I hope this short piece serves a gentle reminder to focus not on the superficial things and wear ourselves out trying to create the ‘’perfect holiday,” but rather to concentrate on the best part of each special day—an opportunity to spend time with the people we love.  Virgil would like that.

(Picture of Virgil serving as the Grand Marshall of Denison’s homecoming parade on October 12, 2012.  He loved riding in the rumble seat of an antique yellow car, tossing candy to kids along the parade route!)

 

Hooks to Learning

The following piece comes from my professional writing file.  I’ve decided to post it to my September blog as we begin a new school year because it addresses the basic purpose of education—how students learn.  As you are reading, think about your best and worst learning experiences….

 Hooks to Learning

Anything that captures a student’s attention and engages the mind has the potential to produce learning.  The opposite is also true: without attention and engagement, there is no learning.

The brain is always searching for meaning to what it is experiencing.  As the brain absorbs information, it constantly searches for a pattern that makes sense.  If a message seems meaningless, the brain will delete it.  Experience and emotion are two hooks that help the brain form a pattern for retaining information.  Without retention of information, learning is not taking place.

What does this mean to the learning environment?  It simply means that in order to learn, a student must be able to build upon existing knowledge, or experience.  For example, students placed in math classes above their ability have been set up for failure.  Their brains do not yet have established pathways for the new pieces of mathematical information.  This places a halt on the learning process.

Emotion is another hook in the process of learning.  The brain puts emotions on a ‘fast path’ or a ‘slow path.”  On the fast path, emotions travel quickly through the brain and skip long-term memory.  Painful and hurtful emotions get on the fast path and travel quickly through the brain.  Learning associated with painful emotions will be lost.  Threatening consequences or using sarcasm, for example, simply produce the opposite of learning–forgetting.

Positive emotions, on the other hand, help the brain absorb new information and fast track it to memory.  Simply put, this means learning must involve more than boring lectures and rote memorization.  Hands-on activities, singing, drawing, experiments, discussion, real-life activities are but a few of the examples that engage emotions in the classroom, and more importantly, make learning memorable. 

The best learning environment is a classroom that draws on previous experience and creates positive emotions to help students learn.  As the new school year begins, my hope is that classrooms are filled with teachers who understand this basic concept of education and students who are absorbing information at a phenomenal rate because they love school and learning.

Zucchini-Phobia

Death and public speaking, according to the experts, are the  two greatest fears in life. Gardeners, however,  know of something people dread even more than dying or giving speeches.  It’s a phobia that is rampant at the end of every summer when normal people exhibit unexplainable dread of that menacing  vegetable–green zucchini.  Outbreaks of zucchini-phobia begin around mid-summer and turn epidemic by the end of the growing season.

At our house, the symptoms appear after my husband comes from the garden with his annual pronouncement that the zucchini are ready.  For the next couple of weeks the small green summer squash is a tasty novelty and welcome addition to the menu.  Alas, the newness soon wears thin.   Zucchini is notoriously prolific by nature, and each plant will produce a bazillion fruit by seasons end.  Even though we pick new squash as fast as we can, more finger-length zucchini instantly appear to replace them.  Left unchecked, these fingerlings transform themselves into footballs overnight.

Our family wages a courageous battle trying to stay ahead of the game, checking the plants daily and picking anything that appears ready.  In the kitchen, I shred and sauté zucchini for use in breads, muffins and casseroles, but the unrelenting plants continue to pop out squash faster than microwaves pop popcorn.  In spite of our valiant efforts, we cannot keep the pace.  After a few weeks of fighting to keep up, we admit defeat.  After all, one family can only eat so much fresh, baked, fried, casseroled, and frozen zucchini.  We must find a new way to keep the produce moving.

Zucchini dispersal is easy early in the season.  We have several sources—friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, and passers-by.  Everyone seems delighted to receive a plump summer squash and greets us with smiles as they eagerly tuck their treasures away for the next meal.  At the office, boxes empty quickly when marked, “Free Zucchini!” and co-workers grab freshly delivered green squash when they arrive for work.  Intently focused on picking, preparing, and sharing zucchini, we are oblivious to the epidemic slowly creeping through the neighborhood…zucchini-phobia.

Attitudes have changed after a few short weeks of the nonstop barrage.  Friends no longer answer the phone, and neighbors turn off their lights when we pull into the driveway.  Our grown children refuse to come for weekends, knowing they will leave with green  hidden throughout their vehicles and in their luggage.  Co-workers suddenly seem extremely productive with no time to check the freebie box, or even walk near the break room.  When someone asks what to do with 10 cups of shredded zucchini left over from baking fifteen loaves of bread and fixing four different casseroles, I have no answer.  I can only sigh.

Tiring of a steady diet of summer squash, we decide we’ve had enough—enough zucchini and enough rejection.  Eager to end the annual nightmare, my husband pulls up the plants and we breathe a sigh of relief.  I look forward to the end of daily trips to the garden to pick zucchini and long for the return of squash-less meals.  I make plans to restore broken relationships with family and friends.  Alas, my reprieve is short-lived.  He just picked the first eggplant.