Zucchini reproduction

Or, what the hell is wrong with my zucchinis?

We grew zucchini (among many other things) back in Goleta. There wasn't much too it- you planted some seeds, a plant or two grew, they produced delicious zucchini. But when I finally planted zucchini here in New York last year, the results were highly disappointing. The plant would blossom, produce a baby zucchini, and everything would look awesome. But then the baby zucchini would stop growing, wither, and rot on the vine. I thought maybe it was because we had a damp, cool summer and hoped this year would be better.

And at first it looked like it would be. My oldest zucchini plant was HUGE, much bigger than last year. It had gorgeous enormous flowers, and then baby zucchinis! They looked bigger than last year's, and I relaxed. Everything would be fine.

But everything wasn't fine. The first baby zucchini stopped growing and shriveled up. Panicked I searched the internet again, and this time found suggestions that my plant might not be getting pollinated. This surprised me a bit, because we have bees around here. Big fat black and yellow bees and little golden honey bees (one even stung Liel the other night). Nonetheless I decided to take the internet's advice and help my zucchini plant have sex, since the bees apparently weren't doing so and I was desperate to have the thing actually produce. It takes up a lot of room in my garden, you know?

First thing I had to learn was the difference between male and female flowers. This, it turns out, is ridiculously easy as the females are attached to a small zucchini and the males aren't. They're only open for a little while each morning, but when they are you're supposed to take a paint brush, dip it in the pollen from a male flower and then brush the pollen off into a female flower. Easy. Sadly, I found this information too late to save one of the two zucchinis currently on my plant, but I did save the other! Their flowers only give you a couple of days in which to pollinate them and then they shut down and the zucchini dies. Here's a picture of the one I saved and the one I didn't. There are other baby zucchinis on the plant (as well as on one of my other zucchini plants) but none of them are big enough to be pollinated yet.

The rest of the garden is looking awesome, especially since my gladiolas started blooming.

I've been pollinating the cucumbers too (on the left side of this picture, behind the smaller zucchini plants) and they seem to love it as they're really trying to take over everything!

Deodorant, Toothpaste, and Cocktails

About a month ago I decided that it was time to un-lazy and start making/using more natural products in my mouth and under my arms. Generally speaking I like to drag my entire family along with me when I make such changes, but the kids don't use deodorant (yet), and Robert has been very, um, resistant to natural deodorants, as he hasn't had the best experience with them actually working. So I switched the whole family's tooth product over, and my deodorant.

For teeth I decided to go with tooth powder, since glycerin is so sticky and coat-y. That shit can't be good for your teeth, it just can't. I bought some tooth powder from Etsy first, to see how we liked it before I bought a bunch of ingredients, and we liked it! The brushing experience is different, as you'd expect, but we all agreed that our teeth felt much cleaner, and stayed cleaner longer. Win! So I bought stuff and started making our own. So far I'm making a clove one for Liel and a peppermint one for Zion. I use both (clove at night, peppermint in the morning). Robert is still finishing up the original Etsy batch, which contains activated charcoal (mine doesn't) and which Robert seems to prefer. I might look into getting some activated charcoal so he can be happy. Since I wasn't kidding about dragging the whole family along with me I sent some of each kind to Kenny and Jenny to try out a few days ago. I'm also thinking of bringing some to my tattoo artist (along with homemade marshmallows) when I see him in a few days. Hey nothing says, "You're a rockstar and I appreciate your work" like homemade candy and tooth powder, right?

Sadly, the deodorant has not been the unmitigated success that the tooth powder is. I've used natural deodorants before (and I'm not talking about Tom's of Maine kind of "natural", but stuff made with ingredients you can buy at the grocery store), with mixed results. My brother has long been a fan of Weleda's spray deodorant, but I never felt it lasted long enough. Deodorants with baking soda work fabulously, but give me a horrible, itchy rash, which is so not worth it. So this time I tried a recipe I found on Crunchy Betty for a deodorant containing clay. The good news: it doesn't give me a rash! The bad news: the first time I wore it to work it did not deodorize as well as one might like. Thankfully my students don't get too close to me, so they were none the wiser. I upped the amount of EOs I was using and that improved things, but I still found that it wore off about half way through the day. So a few days ago I tried this recipe that first coats the underarms with a coconut oil/EO mixture and THEN dusts with baking soda and cornstarch. I'm only on day 3 of using it, but they've been pretty hot days here in NY, and so far so good! No rash, and no horrifying moment when you realized that the smell is actually *you*. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Finally, my dear friend Rachel, who is a crazy talented chef (she catered our wedding! Surely one of the highlights of her career), posted an article on cognac today. To be honest, cognac hadn't ever really crossed my mind, but after reading a little bit about the history of the sidecar cocktail I've decided that I must try one. In fact, I've decided that I want to devote a little time this summer to making and drinking WWI-WWII era cocktails. For science, you understand. So if you'd like to contribute to my research, please tell me about some of your favorite old-school cocktails!