garlic season

our neighbor charlie has a dog named sasha who barks loudly but is a sweetheart. he also wears a fisherman's cap and has a good moustache...
but really what distinguishes him to this blog is that he has contributed beautiful garlic bulbs for next year's garden. he grows them in his garden and dries them in his big equipment shed. he also goes to the garlic festival every year.

i made a visit a week ago -- i brought him some zucchini and tomatoes and he gave me garlic and the secret to planting it. it hardly seems like a fair trade since really he was doing us a favor by accepting the fruit. at any rate he gave us a big bunch of garlic with the bon voyage of: plant what you can and what you don't put in the ground you can eat.

just so you know -- i did plant a whole bed -- and there's still plenty for hummus, pesto, and everything else

i almost forgot another great contribution that charlie made -- he told me the name of those huge gourd/squash things our other italian neighbor grows from construction scaffolding in his front yard ::
Cucuzzi