Last gardening season I planted Butternut squash and Hubbard squash. This season, several volunteer squash plants came up in the same area. If I don’t need the space for other plantings, I usually let volunteers grow, just to see what will happen.

Since the squash from last season were heirlooms, I figured that I would get a nice production of either Hubbard or Butternut, with no effort on my part. I figured wrong. If the plants hadn’t gotten cross-pollinated, then aliens must have landed and commandeered a portion of the garden for their own exotic produce. Or something. They look more like gourds than squashes.

At first I was disappointed that I was not going to be enjoying any free baked squash this winter. But on taking a closer look, I realized that although nature wasn’t providing a free lunch this time, it was providing some very interesting sculpture for my enjoyment.

So much of our life’s experience depends on how we perceive things. I hope you have as much fun looking at the squash photos below (click to enlarge) as I had taking them.

After “finishing” this post, I surfed the Internet for maybe a minute and this remarkable, coincidental video was presented to me, and now I present it to you, too. Draw your own conclusions.