Nshima & Curry

My boy is 14 inches long

That's my boy Zuke in the picture. He's 14 inches long. I'm so proud of him. I call him my boy, because I played a critical role in his "birth." Yes, I helped "inseminate" his mother. But don't call me a deviant. Other people are doing it too. Food enthusiast Jason Perlow describes why in his post "How to Molest Your Zucchini."

Summer squashes such as Zucchini are some of my favorite vegetables to grow in a home garden. You may notice that no matter how well you take care of them, the damn plants won’t produce any fruit. Well, part of this problem is that there are a lot less bees out there to perform the pollination of these plants, and so the plants just grow large with no fruit growing on them. So you have to give Mother Nature a helping hand. Cue the porno music. [Link]

Perlow has some pictures that show you exactly "how to molest your zucchini." He's even got closeups of the female parts, which means his blog is probably banned in China.

The scarcity of bees is a major problem, as Ben Macintyre writes in the London Times.

Bees are dying across the world at a terrifying rate. The apian epidemic started in the United States, where entire populations of honey bees have simply vanished in the phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). At least a quarter of America’s 2.5 million honeybee colonies have been wiped out already, and CCD has spread to Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe. [Link]

Bees, he goes on to say, "pollinate about 80 percent of flowering crops, which in turn furnish one third of the human diet." Wow, I didn't realize we were that dependent on bees. They're nature's gynecologists. A little intrusive, but good for reproduction.

When your harvest begins to squirm

My wife, Malathi, and I have been growing broccoli this summer, as well as several other vegetables, and yesterday we had our first harvest, filling a bowl with some succulent green worms.

It was early evening and I returned from the garden with a floret of broccoli, a tomato, a green pepper and a hot pepper. It wasn't much of a havest, but I proudly took it to the living room to show Malathi and the kids. Everyone was excited about the broccoli -- the kids like broccoli and Malathi likes anything that's green. Well, almost anything. Moments after tasting a little broccoli and raving about it, she screamed, "Worms! It's got worms!"

She counted three worms at first, then recruited me to complete the census. Using a pencil and some vinegar, I counted 15 worms, six adults and nine children. All seemed to be doing well, economically speaking. My census survey revealed that they were all green, all employed, and all native-born, except for one shady character who wriggled in from the neighboring plant.

Oh, another thing: the worms said they love organic gardeners. "They treat us well," one worm said. "They don't spray anything on us. Sometimes they even give us a ride to the grocery store."