Our community is going to try a new festival this week. It's going to be called the Zany Zucchini Street Festival. It may be interesting.
Small communities all over the country come up with odd ways to bring in an extra body. This is what we small communities have resorted to with the gravitational pull of huge, regional shopping centers.
Well, we don't give up easily out here in the hinterlands, and even a small dog can put a big dog on the run by nipping at its ankles. That's what we do out here in the rural countryside; we nip at the ankles.
Anyway, with a void in our late July calendar, an ambitious young woman came up with the idea of holding a zucchini fest in our town. We checked around, and though there are a few such festivals scattered across the Midwest, this is the only one we've been able to find in our locale. Maybe there's a reason for this; I don't know.
Why honor the lowly, highly prolific zucchini? Why put this long, green vegetable on the throne when other vegetables go wanting? Certainly we could hold in high esteem the radish, the carrot, the red beet or maybe even broccoli.
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But no, we are going to hug a zucchini this weekend.
Our garden usually sports one zucchini plant. It usually produces more than we could ever eat. We've found that people who request to be given a zucchini out of our garden suddenly disappear when the fruit is ripe.
They go visit their in-laws, bail out their outlaws or take a trip to the desert, but they are not around when we go to deliver these football shaped gifts of our garden.
Hence, most of our past zucchinis have gone unclaimed and unwanted.
My wife and I took two large zucchinis with us to church a number of years back. We knew a lady who relished them and always made use of them by baking zucchini bread and giving a loaf out for Christmas each year to her friends and relatives.
I gently laid the two zucchinis by the open door of the church and told the usher what they were for and who to give them to. Shortly after the benediction we were heading out the door to shake hands with the preacher when the usher came up to me and pointed out that there were now three zucchinis resting against the door.
"They're breeding right here in church! That's got to be some kind of sin!" he exclaimed.
Our lady baker was thrilled no less.
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So, this weekend they will be having a zucchini peeling contest, zucchini car racing, zucchini catapulting, zucchini bread bake off, a zucchini 5K run and who knows what else.
I just hope we have enough zucchini to satisfy the crowds. That is a very different problem to have when it comes to zucchini!
See you next time. Okay?
