Squashed!

Squashed! Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Today..it was both! It started out as a bad thing. I had "floured" the garden in hopes of ridding it of at least a few of the Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers. It obviously did not work. There seemed to actually be more of the little rascals only now they were white. Each was covered with flour but still devouring my poor plants. Hmm ..sometimes it seems that one's best intentions merely do not succeed. So..I squashed! I did what my kids used to call the "Grasshopper Dance". It is sort of like the twist only on top of multitudes of grasshoppers. These black and red devils are so hard to kill that you literally have to smish-smash the smithereens out of them! When the kids were young, we would go out each afternoon and dance atop the grasshoppers. Invariably, our dance would wind up being more of a gigglefest than a true bug-smashing event. This morning, I squashed grasshoppers until I was dizzy..ok..enough of that. No more "Grasshopper Dance" for me today! I had enough black goo on my red tennis shoes to tar a road. Bad part...I did not seem to get rid of nary a one..there were still millions of bouncy, black beasties munching happily on my plants. Since the "Flour Kill" did not work, Plan B would have to be called into action! Ummm..once I find a Plan B, that is!

As I wandered through the garden, squashed turned into a good thing! I was much happier with this squashed than the other. Back about five weeks ago, Son and I planted several rows of yellow crookneck squash in one of the gardens. They did not do well at all at first, but we finally got a little rain and it seemed as if over night, they put out blossoms. Now..squashed took on a new meaning! Several of the plants were covered with the prettiest little squash! By covered..I mean that I have never seen so many squash on each plant. As Pop would have said "They are as thick as the hair on a dog!" I think these plants are making up for lost time by over producing. I am not complaining, though, since I love squash! Son and I picked a mess of them for supper

tonight. These tender little beauties were the first of the season with hopefully many more to follow. There was one disturbing find in the squash garden..the aforementioned grasshoppers have discovered that they are fond of baby squash, too. There nibbling away on my squash were minions of mouthy meanies! Eating my squash! The "Grasshopper Dance" began again..ugh!