Greek Salad Anyone?

After the wedding madness was (mostly) over, we went off on our honeymoon to Fernie, BC for a week. We flew to Calgary in the wee hours and picked up our rental car, which was supposed to be a compact car but ended up being a 'free upgrade' to a small pickup truck. Yee haw!

We drove to Eric's aunt and uncle's place, and they gave us lunch and graciously took us to Banff and area for the day, just to look around. As I had never seen the Rockies (yeah yeah I know), I was beside myself with excitement, taking all kinds of dorky pictures out the window of the moving vehicle. Banff is beautiful, though overrun with tourists, and it was a lovely day. After that, we drove to Fernie, where we stayed at the gorgeous Island Lake Lodge for five days. We returned almost a week later, and attempted to get our lives back in order. I took another week off of work to myself to get caught up on laundry, putting gifts and other wedding stuff away, finances, photos, and other stuff.

But one of the big surprises when we got back from the honeymoon was the vegetable garden. Dear god, who would have thought that cucumbers and zucchini could grow so much in one week - much less a very dry week!? My brother and his girlfriend were staying at our place, and I think they must have watered the garden at least once, because it was bursting. Behold the harvest upon my return!



There were also a LOT of beans, but they'd started to go woody and tasteless, so I don't consider that a success.

So I've been giving cucumbers away at work, to my mother every time she comes over, and basically to anyone who crosses the threshold at the house. I've since picked off about 5 more, since they hide under the foliage, and they seem to be ripening really quickly these days. I think I'm going to try to freeze the zucchini, cut into chunks with onions, and see how that goes. I read somewhere that you can do that and they taste okay when thawed, but I have misgivings since they're so watery. If they're not frozen, I'll have to make zucchini muffins, zucchini soup, grilled zucchini, stuffed zucchini, the list goes on and on.

Another shock when we got home is that the mystery squash has finally presented itself to us! Are you ready? (Drumroll please).....




It's a pumpkin!

I originally thought it was a watermelon, but now I see that it's got coarse ridges at the top, near the stem, and that the skin is a lot tougher than watermelon skin. There are two of them there (the other one's hiding on the other side of the fence) which have weighed my fence down to the breaking point. Luckily, they're now both resting on something so they won't break.

So the divine irony of it all is that I was so sad to have crushed my one pumpkin seedling early in the season, but now the garden is completely overrun with involuntary pumpkin vines. Ha.

I am pleased with the progress on the acorn squash as well - I have about 5 little squashlets, and more potentially on the way. They seem to grow and ripen quickly so I'm not too concerned with the length of the season. Plus, it's been quite warm this year, so everything is a bit advanced.

I've also been making pesto like a madwoman, and giving batches away as gifts. I have so much basil it's silly, and it's starting to go all leggy and flowering.

So that's the vegetable garden update. I think I'll leave it all at that - I don't need to go into any more detail about the honeymoon. It was very nice to get away.