Teach them with the good stuff
Tuesday September 13th 2016, 9:46 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Garden,Knit

“A friend is getting into knitting,” my son texted. “Got any surplus fluff you wouldn’t mind passing along?”

Fluff being kid code around here for yarn, roving, raw fibers, the works. So I asked what colors they wear.

“Darker colors normally? Never seen him wear anything in a light shade, thinking about it.”

Yeah I was a little surprised and shouldn’t have been, but mostly I was just delighted, knowing just how much fun and even joy that person could be bringing into his life and others’ in the years to come; sure, I’d be glad to enable that a bit, here, just let me stash dive here a moment (don’t think he’d want that laceweight silk…)

Meantime: I read a week or two ago someone’s story of his squash climbing out of his raised bed, the plant within that bed dying, but where it had grown out to it had rooted to the ground and was still merrily producing new squashes. He wrote it to tell people who like to grow on trellises what they might be missing out on, but for me, it was a hey, you, water that new area that the plant had sprawled to, chasing the sun as it edged away from summertime.

So I started to.

And suddenly, after not producing a single new squash since July, there was a new one, and two days after that another new one and maybe they’ll even have time to mature before a frost (especially since they’re near the mango tree.)

And I found this description of parthenocarpy and maybe it explains how that second one has that huge flower still going while the new squash is already that big: as a seedless decoy, which would take less energy out of the plant to produce, to keep feeding the critters it needs to disperse its seeds while luring them away from some of the seeded squash so the plant has some chance of actually being reproduced next year.

We’ll see when we eventually cut into the thing.

Alright. So. Stash. Time to get to it more than that first quick glancing-over. There’s a definite dearth of manly superwash worsted around here, hmm.


1 Comment so far
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Not sure about your descriptions of the different squash flowers. Some are ‘male’ and will not make fruits, but do produce needed pollen and some are ‘female’ with small fruits already noticeable as they flower, whether they get pollinated or not. Is this the situation? Any rate, hurrah for more flowers and hopefully fruits.

Comment by Helen 09.14.16 @ 7:31 am



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