A Mystery Solved!

Once upon a time, (earlier this summer), a mystery plant began to grow in the compost bin. It seemed like its enthusiasm for growing was extra unusual, so Bill moved the mystery plant to a good spot in the garden to see what would happen. Well, it grew and it grew. It had large, LARGE leaves and yellow flowers, and then the flowers turned into things like what you see in the picture above; oval-shaped things. The plant sent out long, curly thread-like things to hold onto the bricks and other branches so the plant could be very very strong.
What kind of plant could it be? we wondered. Heidi guessed a pumpkin or squash of some kind. Bill hoped for watermelons. Diane remembered all the kinds of melons and squash whose seeds might be in the compost pile and hoped for butternut squash. Then she saw how strong the stem is, and wondered, could it be a pumpkin? Nikolai wasn't sure what the plant was, but he did decide that we had the MOST plants of anyone in the WHOLE family! Well, a long time passed. Bill watered the plant and watched how many of the oval things were growing. There were lots of them! When the big hailstorm came, many of the leaves got shredded, but all but 2 of the oval things stayed holding tight to the plant with their big, strong stems. They sure wanted to grow! Bill kept watering the plant and wondering what it was. And Diane and HoneyBear kept going out to see how the plant was getting along. Well, today, SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT!
One of the oval things was a nice sunny yellow all over. It looked like it wanted to be picked and eaten. Diane knew that when she cut it open, there would be clues inside to tell what kind of thing the yellow oval was. So, HoneyBear, the dog, sniffed around as Diane picked the yellow oval thing. She also picked some peas and a tomato and took them in the kitchen to be washed nice and clean. Then it was time to get the strongest knife in the kitchen to cut it open. (It was hard to do---that little yellow oval thing was very tough and strong!)
Look what is inside... Some seeds, we can scoop those out. The rest of the inside looks kind of string-ey. It might be, yes it could be??? Let's cook it up in the steamer.
Yeah! Hurray!! It is a spaghetti squash!!! When we cooked it and scooped out the yummy inside stuff, it separated into tons of yellow strings of spaghetti squash! The mystery is solved! Woo-hoo!

Now, the last question: Should we put spaghetti sauce on it? Some people do. We decided to put butter and brown sugar on it. (It kind of tastes like pumpkin pie that way.) Well, that is what we did, and we ate up almost all of the first spaghetti squash from our garden.

The best part of this story is... this is NOT the end! The big plant with the large, LARGE leaves has LOTS of spaghetti squashes ready to turn a nice sunny yellow any day now. If you hurry, you can come and visit Grandma Diane and Grandpa Bill and get to have your own bowl of yummy spaghetti squash with butter and brown sugar melted all over! That will be the best ending of all!