Thanks for the zucchini bread recipe, mom.

The garden started innocently enough, with just a few packages of seeds and high hopes.

I planted a few seeds. I bought a couple of plants. I've become OCD about the watering.

And the pumpkins have found their way into the yard.

To the right of this shot is a profusion of zucchini.

They propagate like bunnies, the zucchini.

So when a few zukes the length of my finger become large and unwieldy almost overnight, it's time to spring into Action Mode.

We've learned about blanching, and now there are bags and bags of zucchini in a state of suspension in the freezer, waiting until we're ready to make a tasty sauce. We've done our share of grilling.

And then there's the bread.

My mom passed along what is arguably the best zucchini bread recipe ever. Thankfully for me, the recipe is easy. At this stage of the game, I've memorized it.

So I make a couple of loaves almost every morning, and the loaves have fed the folks at my job, my friends, my kids, the neighbors who choose not to ignore me, and many loaves have wound up in the freezer, next to their blanched cousins.

It feels good, this odd garden-oriented veggie sustainability.

At this point in the season, it takes a bit of creativity to keep making interesting things out of oddly shaped squash. And I do wish that zucchini and acorn squash were a valuable currency of some sort. I'd be so very rich.

I know my mom's zucchini bread recipe won't make me a millionaire, but there's a richness in creating these loaves.

This morning, when I was wrist-deep in suds, washing the two loaf pans I use to make my zuke bread, I wondered how many hundreds of loaves of my mom's zucchini bread I've made in these two pans. 

I thought about my mom, from whom so many fruitful, subtle riches continue to generate.

This morning, while I was readying myself to make two more loaves, I wondered how my mom, whose departure from this crazy planet happened 10 years ago tomorrow, would have taken the news that her zucchini bread recipe had found such a solid place to land in my world.

I think she would have been proud, in a quiet, unassuming kind of way.