Much Ado about Not Much

I am beginning to feel like I'll never get through all the cleaning left from redoing the living room floor. Yesterday, I tackled the playroom and then cleaned up all the yard toys, and put them away for winter. Bean and Bugg were spending the night. I'm not sure they were too happy about it. I'm not quite as much fun by Friday's end and when there's much work to do. I knew it was likely to be my last warm day outside and I was woefully behind getting the yard toys cleaned and bleached and put away. The kids are so accustomed to their time here being all about them. They are a little shocked and not too happy to find "no" in Gramerly's vocabulary, but it happens. Finally, they got into cleaning my car and rinsing the toys while I did the bleach water part of the toys. All's well that ends well when Pappy gets on the roof to get leaves out of the gutter and lets you play on the flat tin roof-good times.

Speaking of going through and cleaning and pitching, I recently inherited the little bunny tea set pictured above from another friend's cleaning craze. I let Buttercup use it for a tea (milk) party. She had a big time with Pappy helping to pour and Raggedy Ann looking on.
In addition to some pumpkin volunteers, I planted a Japanese squash, Futsu and Queenland's Blue. Supposedly, when chickens eat the seeds, it prevents worms. The Japanese one is so orange, it's almost red. The orange eaters around here love it grilled (blek). I haven't tried cooking the other two, as I primarily grew them for the girls to have a fresh snack throughout the winter.
The area where I planted the Futsu received the most chicken poo compost and produced, by far, the most fruit. This was the first haul, and last week, after frost killed the vine, I harvested 22 more. They are stored in the back of the palace for winter munching. This was from my only two little seeds that sprouted. Guess it's good all ten didn't take, or someone would've had to hack us out of here like Sleeping Beauty.

I took the Futsu and Queensland Blue to Bean's first grade and did a compare/contrast with a pumpkin. Then we made our own little squash patches with cookies and icing, and candy.
Do you know what this is? My mom tried to grow them when I was little because her granny always grew them. I've tried several times, but this year finally got a little crop of them. I think they were successful because it was so hot and dry.