Early Freeze

This morning, about 5:30 A.M., Mr. Thermometer announced that it was twenty-six wonderful degrees Fahrenheit. Well, that’s the end of gardening season, I thought. Indeed, the green peppers were wilted and mushy. The okra, being a mostly southern crop, had obviously suffered the frostbite apocalypse. Any yet to be harvested pods were mushier than the sad remainder of the green peppers.

We had two types of winter squash, and the vines had obviously come to a sudden end. One type is a Hopi gray squash. Two vines made four good sized fruit. The other was a single vine that produced twenty-four fruits between two to four pounds each, only two of which were eaten by critters. The seeds for this vine came from the local extension service “seed savers” program. I am not really sure of the variety, but it sure resembles the pictures I have found of the Kabocha squash. We have eaten one, a week ago. After an hour in the oven, the flesh was tasty and sweet and dark rusty-orange. I ate mine with butter and sprinkled with a little coconut sugar.

The vine had invaded my potato patch, so with the demise of the squash, I was able to dig the last two of the 24 red-skin potato hills.

There once was a fella named Jack
He came when the night was still black
Gardens behind him were left
of life too early bereft
by cold he made his attack