Sexy squash and scones #2

I planted 3 types of squash this year in my tiny garden...  butternut, spaghetti, and buttercup...  buttercup is my absolute favorite (far right). But while I was puttering along with my life there was an orgy of cross pollinating going on.  I ended up with a LOT of squash but very few are true to type...

There is a wide variety of shapes, colors, and textures... so every squash I cut into is an adventure.  Luckily we love all squash... even if it's "spaghetnut" or butterghetti"

We also had our 1st frost and dozens of the late apples fell to the ground.  I know of at least 3 that Morris brought into the house today and ate...stem, core, seeds, and all.  This evening I found 3 more that he also brought in today and hid... there may be more.  Luckily the chickens love them and the deer keep the area under the three trees tidy indeed.  And speaking of chickens I'm now suspecting our chickens may be roosters in drag. ...still no eggs.  I really expected eggs late September and now we are well into October.





This second batch of scones is fresh apple cinnamon (with applesauce in them from above apples)  They too are delicious and I did repeat grating the frozen butter and chilling the dough.  They rapidly disappeared and tomorrow will be chocolate/orange scones.

And of course Morris guarded them while they were cooling on the rack....

I did burn a batch of sour cream rolls the other day and luckily passed through the kitchen today when the scones were in the oven and noticed the timer had expired and caught them before they burned.  Unless I am actually next to the stove I never hear the timer go off... I depended on Molly for that as she always came to find me (even if I was in the barn) to get me to the oven.  She could actually sensed when it was going to go off about 20 seconds before it did.

Unfortunately Molly has left us.  I knew it was time when the timer went off and she couldn't pull herself up to fetch me. It was several weeks ago and it is still hard to talk about her.  Any time we sneezed or coughed she would charge through the house to check on us.  She always slept right in front of the bedroom door at night and also when I was sick, injured, or having a bad day with my eye injections.  Even though not trained as a service dog, she was a fierce protector by nature. She was a rescue dog and we were her fourth home and we loved her to the very end.

Morris misses her terribly as we all do...

Molly and the oven thing!

Our poor Molly has a hard life.... It is her sole responsibility to protect our home from any disaster resulting from oven neglect.  She immediately panics when she hears the "ding" when the temperature  is set and begins to spin and bark when I open the door and put a pan in the oven. 

She then lays close by and can hear the timer start the final second countdown.  When it actually goes off she gets hysterical, running and barking, fetching me from wherever I happen to be and will not stop until a pan is out of oven, the temp is off and the door is shut...  And to her credit there have been occasions when I did not hear the timer and our dinner would have burned it she had not fetched me.

There has also been many times when something has been done early and I've taken it from the oven and neglected to shut the timer off... When the timer does go off she goes through the whole running, barking scenario and she will persist until I physically go to the kitchen and "pretend" to take something from the oven and shut the stove off.  Then she can relax.

   Molly is a rescue dog and had been returned 2 times before we took her so we knew she has "issues".... among which are that she panics if she has to walk on a hard surface,  when anyone speaks too loudly, a car or plane passes, the phone rings, etc. etc. etc.  If one of us coughs or sneezes she come running in a panic and we have to assure her that "I'm okay!" We have had her six years and this is her forever home but  I often wonder what happened to her before we got her.

She is always on full alert and has 3 beds and they all have to be protected on three sides and where she can dash out to prevent a disaster... one is in my bedroom corner between the wall and the bed and another is the living room between the couch and the wall and third is in my workroom corner where she vigilantly protects me from her post in the corner. If I pull one of her beds out to vacuum she immediately pulls it back into the corner.  She is much loved here though - issues and all..

Molly is a chicken momma!

I've always let my chickens free range during the day and lock them up at night to protect them from the raccoons.  I thought the new hens were big enough now and started keeping the coop door open during the day.  For almost a week they would not venture out....just stand in the door and peek out.  Then for the next week they only would go within 4-5' of the door.  But today they made it all the way to the house and there will be no holding them back now.

 

But they have attached themselves to Molly and it looks like a little parade... a corgi and a entourage of 3 black hens behind her... She is not sure what to make of them.  Every so often she looks back and sure enough they are still behind her.

There is definitely some kind of mother fixation going on here... She hopped on the porch to sit with me and they just waited for her to come back down and off they went again...