It’s that time of the year when people who have vegetable gardens and live close to the earth and in tune with the seasons and all that start complaining about zucchini. “I have so much zucchini!” they say. “It’s coming out my ears! Won’t you take some zucchini?” Zucchini bread starts magically appearing in offices, as people try desperately to use up this weed.

I do not have a vegetable garden — I have a vegetable patio, courtesy of Ken, which really means that we grow almost enough tomatoes to keep me in BLT’s, and a few assorted herbs. We also have many pots taken up by useless things like FLOWERS and CACTI, despite my many attempts to get through to Ken that this is a waste of time and space. “Can you eat it?” I ask. “Because if you can’t eat it, then WHY are we growing it?” Ken thinks I am a plebeian when it comes to gardening. I think he is a plebeian when it comes to growing food. The Nuni doesn’t care. She just likes to pick the “teeny teeny teeny maters”, take a bite, then drop them on the ground.



Which is all a very long and blathery way of saying I am not one of those too many zucchini people (and even if I did have a genuine vegetable garden I would not be one of those too many zucchini people because I have a remarkable habit of picking the zucchini when they’re still flowers and frying them and eating them, and you can eat a lot more zucchini when they’re in fried flower form than you can when they’re in fully grown marrow form). However, I do like a good zucchini, and I do take pity on the too many zucchini people, because, really, there is only so much zucchini bread that anyone can eat.

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