Ralph's squash -- an update

Remember back in May when my 93-year-old neighbour, Ralph, gave me a squash plant? Well, I thought you might like to see how it's grown.

Because I was on vacation for the past 3 weeks, I wasn't sure what I'd find when I got back. But as I expected, Ralph's plant grew like crazy, and was a mass of tangles that my kids weren't sure how to handle. So the day before yesterday, I untangled it and tied one arm of it to our birdhouse support. The longer arm is wrapped with jute and tied up to the weather vane on top of our greenhouse. There are three or four dangling squashes that will hopefully continue to grow... but with high humidity and severe storm watches in the forecast, I'm wondering if I should maybe come up with another system to hold up the vines. I can imagine the winds possibly ripping them down. Ralph winds his vines around a pole attached to the roof of his greenhouse, but we don't have that sort of setup here.

On another note, the garden is really looking great. We've eaten a few tomatoes, the raspberries, snap and snow peas are really coming in, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather allows everything else to mature. I don't expect that I'll be able to grow six- or seven-foot squash like Ralph's, but I'd be happy if one manages to mature so I have seeds to share with other interested gardeners...

Happy gardening, my friends, from a happy gardener! Time to go pick more raspberries...