Astonied by Zucchini!

Have you ever been astonied?  Sure you have!  I like the word.  It’s a wonderful biblical word that appears in the KJV about a dozen times or so and it means: filled with the emotional impact of overwhelming surprise or shock!  Perhaps the most familiar occurance in the Bible is in Daniel 3.24 when “Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king;”

I must confess that I am astonied these days by my zucchini.  On several occasions we have picked our zucchini plants clean one day only to find that they have huge zucchinis on them only a day or two later.  It is almost as if the zucchini genie comes and visits at night and sticks mature fruit on the plants for us to discover and be astonied!  I have similar feelings about mushrooms … I don’t trust things that grow in the dark.  I’ve considered staking them out at night to see what goes on.  Perhaps a video camera to actually film the growth process.  If anyone has an explanation for this phenomenon I’d be interested in hearing it.

I was surprised (but not quite astonied) by another garden happening today.  I walked out to the large pile of woodchips that we are preparing for mulch and was surprised by the sight of the bodies of three robins, lying on the side of the pile.  It was bizarre looking as each one was lying face down with wings and tail feathers spread as though they had been laid out for viewing.  My first thought was that the neigborhood cat had gotten them and killed them but it didn’t look messy … no scattered feathers … they appeared to have their bodies all intact.  I stepped over a large zucchini (that was not there yesterday) to get a closer look and as I leaned over I was frightened as all three robins fluttered up and landed a short distance away on the fence … clucking at me furiously!  It seems as though they were sun-bathing on the mulch pile … I disturbed their trip to the beach!