Everywhere I go I find a pal

Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review

Well, let’s talk about butternut squash. I have both good news and bad news.

The bad news is this year’s butternut squash garden attempt has resulted in pretty much a disaster.

I grow the squash in an experimental, no-till section of my backyard vegetable garden that I seed down with different cover crops.

This spring, I seeded the garden with an interesting cover crop cocktail (red clover, daikon radish, hairy vetch and oats) and, even after I repeatedly lawn-mowed and weed-whacked the resulting vegetation, it stubbornly returned, crowding out the squash for some crucial growing months.

The squash finally started growing, but slowly. I identified one squash from probably six plants that had a decent chance of maturing. But then deer starting showing up in my garden. On Sunday, I discovered that a deer ate his way half through this one maturing squash. I was mad.

But there’s good news, too. The squash good news is that I still have leftover squash from last year’s crop and, stored in my cool, rock-wall basement, it is quite edible. I boiled up a squash over the weekend for whole wheat pizza. Yummy.

The best news, however, is that while this year’s garden squash is pretty much a wash-out, I will, nevertheless, grow the largest butternut squash of my career as a backyard gardener. A squash seed in the compost pile decided to germinate. The resulting butternut squash is enormous. It is the size of a big, fat newborn.

This is the fate of a gardener. You take the good with the bad.

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The typical trout fisherman has little regard for the lowly chub.

It is not a beautiful fish, a big fish or, really, anything special. It fights a little, but not much.

Most trout guys consider catching a chub an annoyance, even an insult. I have seen fishermen toss chubs into the woods in a misguided attempt to direct the fish gene pool of a river.

I have a better opinion, however, of the chub.

On Saturday, I spent four, sweaty hours fishing the Big Rib River, climbing over ancient rocks and marching through tall stands of riverbank grass. Using a wading staff, I trod across mossy, slippery rocks and discovered new sections of the river that I had never seen.

I was looking for trout, but, with low water levels, all I caught were two moderately sized chubs.

Exhausted, I returned to my vehicle. I might have considered the outing a failure, but, I told myself, I did catch two chubs. I wasn’t skunked.

At that moment, I gained a newfound appreciation for the chub, a fish that will populate waters that trout won’t.

All hail the mighty chub!