Emptying the squash savings account

Doing some spring cleaning the other day and thinking it was June and enough with the winter squash already, I hauled the last Cinderella pumpkin and butternut squash out of the "root cellar" (a cool, dark shelf in a closet). Here they are sliced in half for roasting.

It's a small miracle that the rich, nutritious flesh can be grown and harvested in the late fall and protected all winter and spring by their hard rind. It must have seemed like an amazing caloric savings account to our agrarian forebearers. I'll think of them and celebrate the gift of these squash in a meal, then tend my deposits in the form of seedlings reaching for the midsummer sun outside.