butternut squash

It’s almost time.  Time for my little babies to find a home.  Time for someone to adopt them and care for them and reap the rewards of good parenting.

They are used to lots of attention and babying.  As they should be.  After all, they are my babies.

Last year, before enjoying a delicious oven-roasted butternut squash, I took out the seeds, washed them, and dried them.  Then I put them in a brown envelope and labeled them.

This spring, after researching a bit, I made up some potting mix.  Lucky for me I have a friend who has horses.  Which means I have plenty of manure to mix in with my peat moss, perlite, and Epsom salt.  I shall forever hereafter feel completely different about a horse’s ass.  They aren’t all bad.

Next I got the seeds out and planted them.  My name should be Little Red Hen.

Since my sweet husband got me the coveted greenhouse for Christmas a year ago, at the first of March I planted my darling seeds from last year’s meals and desserts.  It was still cool at night, so my husband put a heater with a thermostat connected to it.  Everything was ready.

The first babies to pop their little heads up through the dirt, some wearing their seed as a hat or in folded leaves as though praying, were the butternut squash.  Next came watermelon and cantaloupe.

praying cantaloupe

Okra

Lemon cucumber was next.  Along came my cute little okra wearing the hard, round seed on their heads.

But where were the tomatoes?  I had to buy seed for those because I couldn’t find the seed I had saved from last year — or maybe I didn’t save them — but the dirt was just sitting there, empty.  No little baby heads poking up through the dirt.

Finally, on a day that I forgot to open the greenhouse and it got about 120 degrees in there, they popped out.  Tomatoes do love the heat!  So now, I have baby tomatoes growing into beautiful tomato plants almost ready for adoption.

Such a bittersweet time here at My Babies Nursery.