Summer is filled with lots of fun activities. End of summer, not so much. In fact last summer nothing was fun for yours truly, coming as it did with a car hitting me while I was riding my bike, which in turn resulted in a broken ankle. But this summer was terrific. No bicycle accidents and my son moved back from Denver to Brooklyn so the whole family is once again in the same area. But the end of summer came with a surgical procedure (don’t worry folks, everything is fine) which led me to think about well, everything, up to and including my longevity. I shared this with a friend of mine, Matt Fischer (who is a friend to John as well,) which led me to reminisce about my father’s passing some 15 years ago. I told him about my eulogy and he told me to put it in a comic. I then shared his thoughts with John, and boom, there it is. I had ended the eulogy saying my dad died doing the Tuesday NY Times crossword puzzle, and that I thought that was one of the easier days. For those of you not familiar with the Times crossword, the easiest puzzle is on Monday and it gets tougher everyday ending with the toughest puzzle on Sunday. And that’s the thing about writing a comic strip. Even when bad stuff happens (or especially when bad stuff happens) you can always make a comic out of it.

Which brings us back to the end of summer. As you readers may or may not know, my wife and I sold our house and moved into an apartment 9 years ago. John moved from a temporary apartment to a house. So I no longer have a vegetable garden while he has a thriving one. But the thing about end of summer vegetable gardens is you get overrun with certain vegetables. If you live in the suburbs, that explains people coming over and dropping off tomatoes, green peppers, etc. In addition to these veggies and other goodies, he grew some of the most gigantic zucchini I’ve ever laid eyes on. Big, green, ripe zucchini. Lots of zucchini. Lots. So he wondered what he might do with that embarrassment of riches. And he suggested a dinner party with everything zucchini. And here’s the thing I love the best about thinking up stuff with a partner as talented as John, we spend a lot of time arguing over the most important issues like, “Do we call it a zucchi-tini or a zucchini-tini?” Zucchini-tini eventually won out, but I am willing to bet it’ll be a good long time before they eat another bite of zucchini at Casa Colquhoun.

That’s it for the summer and for this weekend. We will see you next week with a new series.

Andy and John