Stubborn

The crookneck zucchini squash bloomed every day since the beginning of June but refused to bear fruit. Squashes have both male and female flowers, just like cucumbers and melons, and the bad habit of having them open separately, in a way that makes pollination virtually impossible.

The bright and cheerful male flowers open early in the morning while the female flowers stay stubbornly closed until late afternoon, when the heat of the day has already faded the male blossoms into oblivion.

I don't think I ever saw the female flowers open at all, actually, they just look like oblong pointed buds.

I figured that if I leave the squashes to their own devices all I'm ever going to get are their bright flowers, which, pretty as they may be will not improve upon the my produce bragging rights at the end of summer.

This is a relatively common occurrence with squashes and many gardeners hand pollinate them to increase the yield. I will concern myself with improvement later, for now I would like to see at least one fruit on the plants.

The reason this decision took me a whole month is that for a while I couldn't figure out which ones were the female flowers, since all the beautiful blossoms looked exactly the same, until I realized that the female ones never open.

I'm anxiously awaiting the results, yey squash!

Guess what grows in the front yard?

Speaking of the squash family, this spring I started miniature watermelons in a pot on the balcony but they didn't make it. This plant, however, is gracing the front of the flower border, provenance unknown. I here declare that I didn't plant watermelons there, nor did I intend to.

Since it is in harmony with the yellow theme that seems to dominate the garden this year I left it alone. It kind of fits in with the goldenrod, the mums and the yellow snapdragons, and fills the void left by the rabbit ravaged delphiniums.

I'm very curious to see it bear fruit, so far the plant developed according to schedule and bloomed delicate flowers, incredibly small for the size of their progeny. It sprawled in all directions, covering a lot of ground and tightly hanging on to sticks and stems with curly tendrils of a much stronger constitution than their delicate look lets on. I tried to move one of the chords but it was firmly attached to the ground like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians.

The garden decides what it's going to grow, I just live here. I could swear that I planted cottage pinks, plumaria and delphiniums and now I'm staring at nicotiana, goldenrod, French mallow and yes, watermelon. I expect that if I want to see any more of the roses I have to wait for "Peace" to bloom, they are the only yellow ones.