An aside

So our veggie garden was a bit of a write-off. The varmints took nearly all of the tomatoes, egg plants, zucchini, and pretty much everything but the chiles, and they usually damaged those.

The one thing they didn't yet mess with was this squash. It's an unusual plant in that it grows over a huge area. I think the longest tendrils must be 40 feet, and it goes up trees, fences, anything. It climbed one tree and started to produce a couple of these things:

It's getting on for 5 feet long now. Pretty cool