Harvest Time

Mystery vegetable-squash or watermelon?

On Sunday I harvested the garden.  I dug out one row of red potatoes and two rows of Yukon gold potatoes.  Digging potatoes is an odd annual experience.  One the one hand the shoveling and repeated bending are hard on the back.  On the other hand, you can never predict what size potato will come from each vine.  The biggest vines may have the smallest spuds.  A puny, spindly vine may have 2 or 3 good sized potatoes lying beneath it. Harvesting potatoes is almost like unwrapping presents only in this case the wrapping is dirt.  The surprise factor makes me forget the hard work.  My carrot crop was nothing to brag about.  My whole garden was nothing to brag about his year.  I did get an odd looking harvest out of my bigger compost pile;  one of those unplanned, unplanted surprises.  I perched the vegetable on a fence post for a photo.  The shape is close a butternut squash but also a little too wide.  Most butternuts have a definite waist and hips on them (like the other one next to my red bucket in the second picture).  The skin of this mystery vegetable looked like a watermelon to me.  I composted both squash and watermelon so it could be either.  Was this some kind of butternut/watermelon hybrid?  I cleaved it in half and found the inside was not watermelon  and not a hybrid but pure butternut squash.  I baked it and now I have about 12 cups of cooked squash.