ZUCCHINI - week begins and Garden Blogger's Muse Day

Just a heads up, National Leave a Zucchini on your Neighbor's Porch day is coming!

Mark next Saturday, August 8th, and be sure to celebrate,

especially if you, like me, are being inundated by your zucchini plants.

Just to 'sweeten the pot' so to speak .. or maybe just so your neighbors won't hate you,
I'll be posting a new , tasty zucchini-using recipe every day.
You could make a copy and tie it to the zucchini-bats you so generously share with your neighbors. :)

As it is also August 1st, I even found a poem that rhapsodizes about the unique properties of zucchini:

It was an an itsy-bitsy,

teeny-weenysilver striped green zucchini.

While we slumbered, what went wrong?

Overnight it's two feet long!

from http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1146421, which has quite a few poems about zucchini.

I am hoping that you will be inspired to share your own zucchini recipes. Let me know in the comments!!!!

Here's my first recipe, and it is a winner - everybody has a recipe for chocolate/zucchini cake-brownies, etc. I've tried a lot of them over the years, and this one is THE best.

Self – Frosting Chocolate Zucchini Cake

½ c. margarine
½ c. oil
1 ¾ c sugar (1 ½)
2 eggs
2 c finely grated zucchini
1 t soda
2 ½ c flour
1 t vanilla
1/2 c sour cream or buttermilk
4-6 T cocoa
½ t cinnamon (optional)
1 t salt
1 t b powder

Mix oil, margarine and sugar. Add eggs.
Sift the dry ingredients together, including the cocoa. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk to sugar mixture.
Add the remaining ingredients except zucchini blend well.
Stir in the zucchini by hand and pour the batter into a greased 9x13 pan

Mix the following and crumble on top of the cake:

¾ c chocolate chips
¾ c chopped nuts
¾ c brown sugar

Bake @ 350º for 35-45 minutes or until done. Serves 12

(Omit cinnamon to bring out better chocolate taste)

This is a great recipe, folks! Help me out this week, and let me know about your tastiest zucchini recipes.

A new recipe tomorrow. Yum, yum, yum.

Two-fer - Show and Tell Friday and Garden Bloggers Muse Day

Well, I am trying to put everything together into one blog entry.

I am showing a poem I wrote about a favorite childhood memory - going to the county fair.

Some years I spent most of the week there, with my brother and sis and grandmother.

Head to Kelli's blog for show and tell Friday,

and don't miss Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, home of Garden Bloggers Muse Day !

Did I mention it is the best and largest county fair in the U.S.A.?? Or so I was told...

The Great Darke County Fair by Joyce V.

I learned in school that our school was the best.

Our town the best. Our county, without question, was the best.

Here was The Best farmland, glacier-scrubbed and rich for the plow.

Our fair was not just any fair, it was GREAT.

And as a child, I agreed.

I loved the fair food,

the fried scones dripping with butter and honey,

cotton candy, fudge of every color and flavor.

I loved the parade (always held on Thursday),

with 4-H floats and horses and

bands trooping around the track.

I loved the rides, the noise, the games,

the mysterious mustachioed fat lady.

When my money was spent,

I toured the free exhibits in the Coliseum.

I visited my uncle’s cows,

and my cousin’s pigs in the fair barns.

I studied the quilts, the needlework,

the jars of jam with blue ribbons.

Yes, it’s true; our fair is the Best fair of all.
The biggest, the most fun of all
In my memory, the GREAT Darke County Fair
Lives on forever, superlatives intact.

Garden Bloggers Muse Day July 1st

BY THE RUDE BRIDGE

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

like the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set today a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

Happy July 1st! Happy 4th of July!

Be sure to go to Carolyn's blog Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, the home of Garden Blogger's Muse day!

Garden Blogger's Muse Day for June

Garden Blogger's Muse Day is sponsored by Carolyn at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago. Head on over to see what is going on.

It is Iris week at my house, and so I thought I'd share a poem about irises.

The garden with its little gate of green,

Invites you to enter, and view mysteries unseen,

Its vine laden bowers and overhanging trees,

The air filled with sweetness, the hum of the bees,

The flagged walks with Iris galore,

Of most beautiful coloring, unknown before,

Pink, white, purple, yellow, azure blue,

Mixed and mingled of every hue,

You come away wondering, can more beauty be seen

Than in the garden with its little gate of green.

Winstead

Garden Bloggers Muse Day - May 1st

May arrives at dawn and kneels in prayer.

Her dress of green rustles as she rises to meet this day.

Feeling the warm spring breeze on her cheeks,

She smiles as she dances to celebrate the end of winter.

(Her work clothes cast aside for the day)

May is my favorite month , my birthday month! The weather is (usually) great, and I can get outside and plant and enjoy the flowers. May first is my grandmother's birthday. She was born 1 May, 1904, and would be 104 if she was still alive. She loved to garden, too.
Go to Carolyn's blog, Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, to join in for Garden Bloggers Muse Day!

Garden Blogger's Muse Day - Isn't everyone Irish in March ?

”When Irish eyes are smiling,

Sure it's like a morning spring.

You can hear the angels sing

When Irish hearts are happy

All the world seems bright and gay

And when Irish eyes are smiling

Sure, they steal your heart away!”

This is a pretty familiar song, I remember singing it in 3rd grade, my teacher had particular love for all things Irish. It is great to be looking towards warmer weather, Easter, St. Paddy's day, and spring. yipee!

Garden Blogger's Muse Day - December

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Young girls picked them, every one.

When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

by Pete Seeger

Everyone knows this song, sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, and it matches my sadness as the snow is flying and I know it is a 'long time' until I am back in my garden. It is a good thing Christmas is coming.

It is hard to believe that I have a few roses still hanging around on December first. They obviously need to be thrown on the compost pile, but I am hanging on to them as long as I can.

Garden Blogger's Muse Day - November

November Night

by Adelaide Crapsey

Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd,
break from the trees
And fall.

Garden Blogger's Muse Day - Veggies Sing !

I hope I am not being too silly for blogger's muse day, but it is the month of Halloween. If you have never seen Charlotte and Vendetta, characters on makingfiends.com , then you are missing a good smile for the day. Here is a low-res pic of them.
Charlotte (the sweet one) has taught the vegetable 'fiends' to sing a song, much to Vendetta's horror:

'Eat vegetables with every meal

Or your lips will start to peel

And your eyeballs will fall out,

And your teeth will smell like trout.'

Happy Muse Day! Happy October!