I realized as I was sending out this message, that here it was hot and humid, and there is no melon in my fridge! That’s an oversight that needs to be connected with a trip to the farm stand today. Mother Nature really concocts some wonderful things, doesn’t she?

I have a picture I treasure of my friend Lorraine and me eating melon on a beach in Corfu. Back in the days before we knew how dangerous sun worshipping was, we were young and tanned and beautiful and thrilling to the taste of watermelon. It was so hot that day and the sun was so bright. We’d hauled that melon on the ferry with us for our day-trip to another side of the island. Oh, it was heaven.

Actually, when I start reminiscing about melon, I can think of many wonderful meals with melon as a focus point… and all of the memories are of slow, relaxed meals. What joy. And it’s not as if eating an abundance of melon is bad for you. Slurp! And how many foods can you say that about?

I don’t know if melon is really a key to World Peace, but I do know that the cultures that don’t grow melons crave them, and the cultures that do relish them. So perhaps, they could be a reminder of the importance of World Peace. Certainly we need reminders. And we need slow meals with friends from cultures all over the world. If we start weaving peace, there is no way they could bring us to war with one another. So, maybe, yes, melon could be a key to World Peace. Let us make it so.

It’s certainly delicious enough to be!

I don’t know what it’s called where you come from, but around here, thanks to German roots, you put up vegetables (up where, one wonders.)

So yesterday faced with far more zucchini than I (even after waxing eloquently about it) could manage, I through it in the crockpot with a whole bunch of other wonderful things, set it on simmer and came back 24 hours later. yum. A whole pot ful… some summer for now, a bit for later in the year.

I’m currently savoring Nature’s bounty over polenta, with just a bit of cheese!  yep! Yum!

I don’t know how we’d manage it… whether taking a photo and putting it on our mirror would do it… but imagine if we could take out a little Peace success and fill up/fuel up when we’re not having much luck moving forward… It’s one reason we really need to catalog successes, no matter how small. It hits the reset button, helps us to remember that small successes work and that we have made progress. and hooray for us.

Computer glitches have me running behind… so it’s time for me to finish today’s bounty (sufficient unto the day is the bounty thereto!)

Eat now, put up some abundance for later!

It’s come to this. I’ve just created an analogy between zucchinis and Peacemaking… A bridge too far?

When I said I would write about summer vegetables, I knew I’d have to write about the zucchini… I mean, it’s a constant of the garden box… So I thought, tackle it early in the month and get it done.

People write differently. I’m never exactly sure where I’m going to go with a piece, whether it’s a sermon or a poem. I’m one of those writers who hears from her subjects rather than one who starts with a plan. I write to find out what I think/feel/believe, and then I formulate and format. So there was the lowly zucchini, the butt of so many garden jokes, imparting its wisdom about the importance of versatility and willingness to get along and, oh, by the way, the gift of abundance.

If you live in central PA, people are as likely to be making chocolate cake with this squash as they are ratatouille! Oh, they exclaim it makes the cake so moist. I’m sure it does, but if I wasn’t eating that 15 inch coconut cake at our local diner yesterday, I’m not wasting the calories on zucchini cake! I’ll take mine with sauce, thanks anyway!

I dawns on me as I write this, that versatility and willingness to get along or go along are not always good… it’s up to us… isn’t it always? Nature provides what she does, in this case in great abundance, the question is what do we do with it? So, my dears, wishing you the Peace of the big zucchini!