Candy Roaster Squash

This year I ordered some Candy Roaster Squash seeds. This large squash is a bit of a cross between a sweet potato and a pumpkin. Fruits can grow to well over 10 pounds,

 enough to feed this motley crew!

I planted exactly FOUR seeds to grow up a chicken wire trellis.
They've grown up, over, around, and seem hell bent on world domination at this point.

Somewhere under that mass of leaves is a grill 
and my husband is not happy about that.

I used to have a small bed on the side of our back porch that was growing black eyed peas, tomatoes, and is home to a rosemary bush...

The candy roaster has decided to take over that bed as well.

I wouldn't mind pruning it back a bit, but there are more than a dozen of these beauties growing all over and I can almost taste that
candy roaster squash pie!

I know my blog posts have been sporadic, but if you don't hear from me again in a week, send in reinforcements...

The candy roaster may have overtaken us!

(I'll be the one laying on the couch with pie crumbs on my chin.)

Elephant garlic harvest

The other day I noticed that my elephant garlic greens had turned brown and wilted.  So I asked Doug to dig up the garlic patch to see what we could find.

THIS is what we found!

14 baseball sized elephant garlic!

The cloves were bigger than my thumb, and the smell was divine.  Elephant garlic is supposed to be much milder than traditional garlic and I cannot wait to cook with it.  I might even try pickling some.

Here are some of the "babies" the bulbs left behind.  You can bet they are going right back into the garden, or out to a few friends.  Because you don't want to be the ONLY one eating garlic, am I right?

And from the size of these monsters, 

we're going to be eating LOTS of garlic

(and probably lots of Tic-Tacs, too!).