I have told you about George the gardener teddy, but do you know Greta who is also a gardener teddy? George and Greta are such great friends! They share so many gardening tips with each other!! They spend hours and hours of teddy time discussing what is the best time of the year to plant certain seeds or seedlings, and what is the best tomato variety to have in the garden, and what is the best way to prevent snails eating up nice juicy plants and… well as you can see, there are just sooo many topics that they can discuss! And their conversations are about all sorts of plant topics, from fruit to vegies, from flowers to herbs… anything gardening related!! You really would like to see their backyard gardens!! My teddy eyes sometimes pop out when I see all the tasty fruit and vegetables that they produce in their gardens. Hmmm…. I must be truthful. My teddy eyes do NOT actually literally pop out! If they did, I would not be able to see!! But, I do get very wide eyed as much as teddy button eyes can go!

I just have to tell you about Greta and her zucchini episode last year! Us teddies still get a chuckling feel in our mouths when we think about it! Greta decided that she wanted to grow zucchinis. She is such a very, very kind and caring teddy because do you know why she wanted to grow zucchinis? Can you guess? Well, I will tell you. She wanted to make BIG batches of zucchini soup to take to the Teddy Bear Care Home. Isn't that so very considerate of her! In case you don't know, the Teddy Bear Care Home is a place where teddies of all ages live.  Here is a quote from the brochure advertising the Home:

  "Our Teddy Bear Care Home is such a delightful Bear Home for bears to live in! Many aged bears live here, whom just need a bit of extra care because their lovely fur may have become a bit "weary" or "tatty or "worn" due to being a bit loved too much by their previous owner friends or they may be missing an eye or they have been hugged a bit too energetically over the years by their owners and they are now in the need of a little bit more teddy help in a specialised teddy care home. And then we are home for the very young bears whose owners have sadly ignored them, and so they have joyfully been accepted to come into this Home. Yes, there is a wide variety of ages and colours and nationalities of bears in this Home and it is such a happy place to live in with singing and music and eating."

Well, Greta decided that all teddies who live there would like to have some nice zucchini soup made especially by her! As an "added bonus", she would also make some zucchini muffins for them to have after the soup! The teddies at the Home were very excited, and said that they felt hungry just thinking about this tasty and delicious meal that awaited them! But… Greta did have to explain to them, that she hadn't even planted the zucchini seeds as yet! Oh well, the teddies still were excited in anticipation! After the seeds were planted, I heard a "Ring! Ring!" noise on my bear mobile phone one morning, and after answering, do you know who was speaking on the other end? Yes, it was a very excited Greta telling me that "Zac and Zebedee" the zucchinis had appeared as sprouts out of the seeds, and now she could plants these seedlings in to the backyard soil! (up until now, the seeds were just in little ice cream tubs filled with soil) A few minutes later I got a btb message from Greta, (which means bear-to-bear rather than the normal sms text message), telling me that Zac and Zebedee were so very happy in their new vegie patch position. Unfortunately, she was trying to tell me so much in her text message but the 160 letter limit stopped her right in her writing/typing tracks and it made quite a funny and abrupt end to the text!

The days and weeks went on and I looked forward eagerly to Greta's weekly  report on how the zucchinis were progressing. She invited me over to her home for afternoon tea one day! Ohhh… I was so very, very excited to be going out for afternoon tea! It sounded so elegant and very "posh".  Greta grows great cucumbers so I wondered if she would make cucumber sandwiches? (Don't tell anyone else, but I was secretly hoping that she didn't make these types of sandwiches. I have never, ever liked cucumbers… and definitely would not want to eat them in a sandwich! I also don’t like gherkins! In fact, I made up a special word:" gherky" to describe any time that I feel a bit "yucky". It is the mixture of the two words "gherkin" and "yucky". Greta doesn't grow gherkins so I can  be certain that she won't serve gherkins.) I was thinking and thinking about what she might make for our afternoon tea, and my guess was fruit muffins,  tomato and lettuce sandwiches, followed by a serving of fruit salad. Hmmm… perhaps that is not quite usual afternoon tea food, so I then changed my idea and decided that perhaps she would make tomato scones and banana and carrot cake. And… we would definitely enjoy sipping twinings tea out of fine bone china tea cups!

Well, I had a delightful afternoon tea with Greta, and she did serve these types of scones and cake, so I had a quite  yummy, happy time! Greta excitedly showed me Zac and Zebedee, and they did look very healthy! They were actual  small vegetables by then, and they seemed to like living in Greta's backyard garden. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you what I took as a present for my nice hostess. I always try to be a polite teddy bear, and do consider it very good manners that if you are invited out to afternoon tea that you really should take a present. But… in theory that was a most acceptable idea, but in reality and practice it proved a very difficult thing to do! What do you give a "teddy that has everything" ?!! I must be truthful though. Greta really doesn't have EVERYthing in the world! She doesn't have a Mickey Mouse ears hat. She doesn't have a necklace with a heart on it. And she doesn't own a bird cage. But… she does have everything she needs for a very happy teddy girl life! Soooo… I started thinking and thinking, and decided that seeing I am Kiosk Ted Strath and seeing she is a gardener, and when you combine these 2 facts together I decided the best thing to do was to take something from off the Kiosk shelf that is fruity. My teddy eyes looked from left to right, then right to left, then… they became a bit cross -eyed!! But I discovered "the" right gift to take to Greta… a packet of fruit mince pies! They are fruity and can be bought at the Kiosk! Now you know what I gave to Greta! I gave them to her just as I was saying goodbye, so as she could enjoy the fruit mince pies on her own and remember me when eating them.

That evening, I snuggled down into my comfy chair  in the Kiosk , and promptly fell asleep.  I was having such a nice dream. The dream was filled with colourful flowers which had big happy smiles on them! Teddies were flying about in the air! Other teddies were dancing about listening to all sorts of bright and joyful music! I was having such a delightful time… when a very strident and loud noise broke into my dream and beckoned me to return to the "real world"! It was my mobile phone, and the caller was a very upset and concerned Greta! Before I had the chance to say "hello Greta", she interrupted my greeting with a very tearful and worried sounding voice:" I have been taken over! They have invaded by garden! What do I DO? What DO I do? WHAT do I do?"  I did not even have a little clue who had invaded Greta's garden. I wondered if it was a burglar. I had read in yesterday's newspaper that Brett the bugling burglar teddy had been stealing items from various places. But teddies are always good, and so burglar teddies don't really steal items ... they just take items from people that have finished using them, leave a note explaining why they have taken them, then deliver the items to those teddies that really do need to  have these particular items. But… I didn’t think that it was Brett that had invaded Greta's garden because Greta didn't say she been left a note signed by him. But then on the other hand,  she had only tearfully said 2 sentences  so I suppose it could have been Brett. I tried to calm Greta down over the phone, and tried to get her to tell me what had happened. Gradually her tears started to ease, and she was able to tell me about the invasion. Her garden had been "invaded" by… Zac and Zebedee the zucchinis! Apparently they had grown HUGELY overnight! From being little zucchinis, they were now very, very big ones and they were taking up such a lot of space! Greta is not such a big teddy, and so she couldn't manage to carry such huge zucchinis and she was a quite a bit afraid because they had grown so quickly! I quickly rang all my other teddy friends and we all headed over to Greta's home to try to help her and have a look at these big zucchinis. They were very big, I do have to admit! We got a knife and cut the ends of them, to separate them from the plant. Then, we heaved and puffed and carried them over our shoulders and placed them on the kitchen sink. Then, we all sat down and collapsed with exhaustion! Greta was very relieved that her garden was now "zucchini-less invaded"! The next thing though on her agenda was to try to find a way of cutting up the huge zucchinis to make the soup and the muffins! All of us teddies very quickly decided that we had better leave Greta to finding a way of doing that, and headed for the front door to return home! Greta called out many, many thanks to us, and we were off home bound!

 Greta must have discovered a solution, because the next day,  I heard news through the chatty "bear -line", which is much more chattier and truthful than the normal "grape vine", although  you do need to know that Greta and George do grow very tasty and juicy grapes, but anyway  I heard some great news through the bear-line. Greta had delivered a BIG saucepan full of zucchini soup and dozens and dozens of little zucchini muffins to the Care Bear Home that day!! Greta is so very kind, and is also a great cook!

Oh, I just have to tell you about the very funny thing that happened at the Bear Care Home! Every little teddy, bigger teddy and in between teddy all got together and had a big executive meeting. They all passed a big important resolution when they heard that the zucchini food items were coming. The resolution was… in memory of Zac and Zebedee who had allowed themselves  to become meals for them to eat, they would all dress up as Zebras  for the day that they ate the food! Z for Zebra and Zac and Zebedee!  It was a quite a sight to see lots and lots of teddies all dressed up in black and white clothes! I got a phone call from one of my friends who lives there, asking if he could please borrow my black bow tie and white shirt for the day! Hmm… I had to explain to him that I was very sorry but I couldn't do that as I don't own a black bow tie and I always have to hire white shirts if I need to wear them.  He must have got me mistaken  for Bobby bear who is quite renowned as the  "black bow tie/white shirt wearing" teddy!  I do hope that he was able to get in touch with Bobby in time to have a loan of his clothes.

All this talking about zucchinis and z's has made me quite sleepy. Goodnight…zzzzzzz

Until next time,

                  Enjoy having some zucchini themed meals when you can! And be very, very wary of fast-growing zucchinis!

   Your friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                Also simply known as "Ted"!!