Monday, August 31, 2020

The sex life of squash

The squash blossom on the left is a female; the one on the right, male. Also there is a swelling at the base of the female stem.Females turn into squash fruit; males last week turned into stuffed squash blossoms For some reason, I have an 8: 1 male to female sex ratio


The blossoms waiting to be stuffed after I remove the stamens
Dishes I have: From fancy bone porcelain, vintage majorca Wedgewood, hand painted Mexican pottery, hand made art fair porcelain, various glass plates, IKEA kids plates. What do we use most? cheapo white Corelle. The rest are for company although with Covid, my guests outside get fancy Chinese New Year paper plates   Anyway last week a Corelle plate spontaneously exploded surprising me   This apparently has been seen before
An intense Miss Hannah Same blue eyes as my son
Her big sister Allie
Nasturtium blossoms which I used to garnish my Mexican stuffed fried squash blossoms. Just because a flower is edible doesn't make it taste good

We had a Mom's group surrounded by big trees and screech owls. Ate my first fake burger
My sunflower patch
Maya caught her first fish, a sunfish. I caught them as a kid always surprised how much they could fight for weighing 4 ounces


I wanted to make something special for the Moms. I did make red pesto spaghetti squash (lots of spaghetti squash ripening here)  I had made stuffed blossoms years ago purchasing them fresh in a San Diego Farmer's market. I think they were zucchini blossoms and the seller told me what to do as there was no internet in those days. Who knows what blossoms I used this time? They all look the same, pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, winter squash and summer squash. I have them all. And I get mainly useless males though I am not hurting for squash so a few females had formed.


After another wretchedly hot week in which I attempted to bike until my tire became flat and would not hold air for more than an hour, it is finally cool. Also I have been riding with only a front brake and one chain wheel worth of gears. Time to go to the busy shop as all sorts of people are riding bikes now. New bikes can not be bought. They agreed to do the brake and tire. For the other stuff I have to come back in a few weeks. I picked it up two days later. Imagine my dismay to find the tire was flat when I wanted to do my long Sunday ride. Well maybe the air accidentally was let out of it. It held air until  was five miles away. I suspect they never changed the inner tube (they did charge me) and just figured I didn't know how to fill a tire and filled it. It does hold air for a little while. But it put me in a really bad mood. Are they going to deny they did this? Was it just an honest mistake?They don't open until Tuesday. I am so disappointed. In them. In humanity. In our country. Plus I felt sick from maybe drinking too much the night before or maybe I am not used to artificial meat. Aside from the five miles of riding and a half mile of walking until Steve could rescue me, it was the first day in months that I didn"t do my daily quota of exercise. Instead I sat around feeling sorry for myself.


I do feel better today. My poison ivy is finally clearing up after two weeks made longer because I wore the same contaminated clothes I was wearing when I was exposed. I can tolerate it during the day but at night, it burns and itches. I had been taking benedryl to stop the itching and make me drowsy. No new blisters, just dry irritated skin from all the blisters. And the insurance finally agreed to pay for my mammogram after 3 phone calls. Still need to find a new company. The one we use advertises heavily bragging that they accept 98% of the hospitals in the US. Just not the biggest one in our county apparently. The old company we used is looking better. They at least paid for things.

1 comment:

Elephant's Child said...

Lovely photos.
You can keep the heat though.
And a big, big sigh at insurance companies, who always look after their own bottom line rather than the customers.

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