the Zucchini Handshake...

This is a wonderful time of year in the Valley of the Two Wallas.  The triple digit temperatures are gone and the gardens are coming into maximum production.  I believe that it was Garrison Keillor that suggested that residents of (or visitors to) small towns in rural American should always lock their cars or when they return they may find it full of vegetables.  That would be true right now in Walla Walla.

We have received vegetables from well over a half  a dozen friends this summer.  We have even had a bag of tomatoes tied to the front door of Shady Lawn Antiques one morning before we were open.   We have really appreciated these vegetables but occasionally we have had an excess and some of them have been re-gifted to friends without that particular vegetable in their garden.

This summer, I have noticed a new phenomenon,… the Zucchini Handshake*.  It goes like this… someone walks up to you and reaches out with a Zucchini in their hand as if they are going to shake hands with you.  So the normal automatic reaction is to lift your hand toward theirs.  At this point they place the Zucchini into your hand and quickly let go before you can react.

Just as they let go of the vegetable they say “Can you use a Zucchini? My garden is producing a lot of them?”  Well the Zucchini is already in your hand and you can’t very well refuse their generous offer and hand it back to them.  Pretty soon you would have Zucchinis being passed from hand to hand to hand quicker than a baton at a relay race. So there you have it, like it or not, one Zucchini in the hand is probably better than two in the bush….

*Actually it was a cucumber but this really did happen.

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