Volunteers

(Today's prompt from StoryADay.org urges us to write a silly story that includes the following words: official, corpulent, totem, panic, scratching, delicious. I decided to make do on my promise to come back to volunteers, volunteer squash, that is.)



The official verdict on zucchini is quite simply this: If you buy a packet of seeds, prepared to be overwhelmed by this green-skinned, pale-yellow fleshed specimen of summer squash in the months of July and August. An average $3.45 packet from the organic, employee-owned supplier Johnny Seeds will give you 30 seeds. If all 30 seeds produce a viable plant (and because zucchini is ridiculously easy to grow, chances are it probably will), you might end up with 240 zucchini or more.

The first, fresh-off-the-vine zucchini are ridiculously delicious. At this point, the fruits are slender, delicate fruits. Slice them in half, brush them with olive oil, sprinkle them with a dab of black pepper and garlic and put them on a grill for five to seven minutes. The flavor is so delectable that you might decide that you don't even need the olive or the spices.

But zucchini multiply like rabbits, creating panic among gardeners. If left in the garden, they will grow long and corpulent, resembling baseball bats. Our summer of zucchini panic commenced in 2011 when I left New York for three weeks in Indiana, and my husband Jim could not cut the fruits off the plants fast enough. By the time I returned, the entire bottom row of the refrigerator was lined with zucchini. So were several shelves in the kitchen, and still there were dozens bursting in the garden. The zucchini plants entangled with watermelon vines and cucumbers, producing a bounty of squash. Jim urged me to just leave them in the garden to rot and create "green manure," but I wanted to make the most of the tomatoes and eggplants also growing in the spot.

We ate what we could, and in late August, I began chopping and pureeing the zucchini to store for the winter. Jim laughed at me when I talked about winters of zucchini crust pizza, zucchini soup, and zucchini in stew. The truth was, we no longer could stand the stuff. It was a gift that could not stop giving.

In the meantime, as summer wound down, and fall approached, a new lover appeared in our midst. This would be winter squash, the harder-shelled, longer-storage squash that has long been appreciated by those who lived in areas with short summers and need a nutrient-packed dense flavorful vegetable to help make long, cold winters more palatable. Winter squash comes in several varieties: spaghetti, delicate, striped spaghetti, butternut, acorn, honey cup, hubbard, kabocha, and the simplest most bountiful orange pumpkin. Available from local farmers for $2 to $3 each, we tried several varieties, fell in love with many of them, and resolved the following summer to grow them ourselves.

Squash -- ranging from zucchini and cucumbers to the harder-shelled winter varieties -- is a vegetable that in many ways deserves a place at the top of a totem. Like beans, it is a nutritient giver to soil and is often regarded as a vehicle for the natural replenishment of spent soil. It is also one of the plants that needs warmth to grow. It can be started in pots, but it really shouldn't spend more than a few weeks confined. Because like a caterpillar with an itch to travel, it soon will scratch its way out of confinement and try to set roots in whatever it encounters. It often forms part of the traditional triad of plants that America's First Peoples used in three sisters gardens alongside corn and beans. The idea was that the corn plants would form stalks that bean vines could travel up and mounds that squash plants could travel down. If all goes well, the average winter squash seed would yield a strong healthy vine bearing two to five fruits. Five packets, each containing 30 seeds, would yield enough squash to feed a family of four for six to nine months of each year.

If all goes well.

Enthusiasm often precedes experience. In the cold months of winter, we ordered seeds. As the seeds arrived, Jim began to amass egg cartons, peat pots, and plastic cups to plant seeds. I read up on frost dates, planting calendars, and consulted both the online Farmer's Almanac and numerous sites on how to plant in accordance with the waxing and waning moons. I tried to impart advice to Jim. He listened, and proceeded to plant everything with little, if any, consideration for what would fare well in egg cartons and for when certain plants needed to be outdoors. By late April, winter squash seedlings were bursting out of their egg carton homes, searching for sun, water, and space to self-express their desire to vine. The spring was unusually dry and windy, and Jim found himself beating his head against the splintered wood planks of the barn several times as a combination of the thirst for freedom and an aiding and abetting wind blew the egg cartons to smithereens, scattering the winter squash seedlings everywhere.

Always the optimist on matters concerning the garden, I urged Jim not to worry. "If we get twenty-four squash, we'll have enough squash to last us six months."

"But what if we want to eat squash more than once a week?"

"Trust me," I said. "We won't."

Some of the squash got planted and sprouted strong, healthy vines. From the vines emerged a bountiful array of yellow-and-green striped delicatas, bright yellow spaghetti squash, dusky beige butternuts, and a few green acorns. We spent the summer picking cucumbers, yellow crooknecks, and patty pan squash for the grill (we couldn't bear the thought of zucchini) and watching the winter bounty grow. By late August, Jim got impatient and we began cutting into our winter stash. Squash off the vine tastes best if it is allowed a ripen on a shelf for seven to ten days, so soon we were enjoying baked, grilled, pureed, stewed, and sauteed flavors each night.

But I worried. We ended up with close to twenty-four fruits. But I miscalculated our fondness for squash. It became apparent that we were eating it every two or three nights, despite my efforts to mix up the palate with eggplant, bittermelon (an Indian and/or Chinese summer squash that is said to ease high blood pressure, cholesterol, and gastric infections), and the fast-diminishing crop of summer squash. Squash at the farmers market, I also realized, wasn't selling cheap. It was going for $1 a pound, sometimes $2, and as the most bountiful fruits of the fall harvest began pouring in, the sizes kept getting larger and larger.

Then, a miracle occurred. In the compost bin, volunteers appeared. The seeds from winter squash we had sampled in the previous fall took root in the increasingly fertile soil that we were creating from food scraps, yard waste, weeds, and various herbivore animal manure, and like plants in search of a soul to self-express, they began to spring out of the compost heap and grow.

They grew and grew and grew. By early October as the rest of the garden was beginning to wind down, these volunteer vines were still in warm soil traveling and twining, and producing an ever increasing array of fruit. Jim, encouraged by their energy, began cutting the fruits from the vines, and soon some fifty dimple-sized pumpkin like squashes surrounded the concrete edges of the former milk shed where we create compost. For all the effort we put into the garden, these volunteers gave back ten times over. As the first frost approached, we found ourselves hastily reorganizing storage space in the darker recesses of our kitchen and basement to accommodate the volunteer squash.

The volunteers helped feed us through the winter. Recognizing the power of a squash seed from their energetic work, we carefully saved seeds from each variety of squash that we cut and dutifully stored them in small glass jars that used to hold jelly in order to plant them the following spring.

The seeds are now sprouting, in pots much larger than egg cartons. They will go into the ground in two weeks, hopefully, and once again we are dreaming of a colorful fall harvest bounty that will nourish us through the winter. Some of the seeds, however, were slower to grow, which put us into a momentary panic. Then, two days ago, Jim whooped with joy. In the compost bin, aided by light, heat, and a new element of chickens scratching, the volunteers are once again starting to grow.