Hope Is a Thing with Baby Fruit

It’s been a strange gahden year, or if we’re being positive, it’s been a year to learn stuff about plants and patience. It has been raining, hard, a lot. Like people, some plants loved it, and some were like, WTF, where is the sun and stop pelting me with water, dammit. So it was new to me to keep track of which plants were which.

I thought I had learned patience, but Mother Nay-chah just chuckles at me. I’m most impatient at the beginning of the season, when the plants are getting established, and I’m having to constantly patrol the perimeter against bugs and beasts. Then I’m impatient for the plants to get bigger. But finally when they do, I can relax a bit and enjoy the show — green leaves unfurl, flowers spread their petals to beckon the pollinators, and before you know it, little baby tomatoes and peppers are peeking out to say hello. But not if you are a butternut squash in my garden this year.

Oh, the vines seemed to love the rain, they traveled everywhere and began to climb up the back fence. I was so proud. I started those babies from seed indoors, seed! I worried over them, poked, hovered, and encouraged. When they were ready, I planted them lovingly into the raised bed: 3 plants this year instead of 2 like last year. Last year I got exactly 3 butternut squash, which I was very happy about, and I enjoyed their soup very much. One more plant might get me 4 or 5, which would be even better, no? So I decided to add a third plant. I’m not a greedy person, and I don’t need a huge harvest. As my gardening friend Becky likes to say, there are grocery stores if your harvest isn’t what you had hoped for.

The long winding vines began to flower, huzzah! And while I was getting tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and cucumbers, there were no baby squash. But it is called winter squash for a reason. You harvest them in the fall. Patience. I took a deep breath and admired all the other plants.

But then we got to August. I saw lots of male flowers, those big showy ones with long stems, but no female flowers, the smaller ones with baby fruit and the promise of soup in October.

To my credit, I wanted to, but refrained from, berating the squash. OK, well maybe I muttered things under my breath and said in a false bright voice, “You’re doing great, it would be awesome if you could get some baby squash going! But I totally understand if your don’t, what with the weather and all!” I’m sure the plants were not fooled.

I keep a garden journal and riffled frantically through it to see when the squash first appeared last year. Surely it was by now? The only reference was an entry from 9/17 about how someone had nibbled at one, but it was healing over, and they were still green but coming along nicely.

Damn you, haphazard garden journal keeper!

So, like many things I have been having to let go of lately, I had to let the baby butternut squash go. I was impatient as hell, but if this wasn’t a good year for butternut squash, I was just going to have to suck it up. Instead, I had to stop and recognize the tomatoes that were ripening before my eyes, the tomatillos that had survived the triple striped bug assault and my ignorance about when to harvest them. And the peppers! They have been producing gorgeous green crunchy goodness. Not to mention the herbs, which have been pest free and abundant all season. Let us now praise the hard working herbs: rosemary, oregano, thyme, and parsley.

What is that annoying saying? Want what you have. OK, fine. You all are amazing, and I’m happy that the bees get to enjoy all the big, beautiful squash flowers. I was probably only slightly more convincing than when I “didn’t” berate the plants.

But then, as what usually happens when you let shit go, I was checking all the plants this weekend, and there it was. The baby butternut squash, waaaaaaayyyyyyyy at the end of the long-ass vine. (Really, dude? It took all this time–nope, nope, I really mean, welcome! So happy to see you!)

And lo and behold, 2 more!

And yes, we couldn’t do it without you male flower, but I saw a lot of you. Balance is good.

And so we’re off to the races! Or not. I still have 2 months until I get butternut squash soup. BUT that I am more than likely actually going to have soup makes me very happy indeed. I just need a little patience.