What ARE these?

This is a cry for help.  I'm trying to figure out what the below plants are.  Well, actually, not so much the one on the right.  I learned that it is a Poke Berry, and that you can't eat them.  Which is a dern shame because we have roughly 347 of them growing nearby.  The one on the left, however, is a mystery plant.  It might just be a weed, and I'm definitely not going to eat it or anything, but now I just have to know.

Mystery leaf & fruit (left), Poke berries starting to ripen (right)

I know the fruit looks kind of like a blueberry, but it's larger (almost the size of a nickel) and I kid you not, resembles a tiny blue squash.

This is the inside.  It smells kind of like cucumber?  I have been researching for hours and got nothing!  If you have any ideas, clues, or resources, please send them my way!

Backyard Discoveries

Check this out.  These bad boys are all blackberries.  I noticed them while picking blueberries in the neighbors' yard.  When I mentioned to them that they had a wall of berries, they were shocked, having no clue that they existed!  So I went to pick.  Although there were many berries, there were also many spiders and thorns.  

And I'm a wuss.  

So I only managed to pick a small bowl-full, but there was enough to make jam.  Since I decided to make do only with what I gathered, I checked Ball's pectin calculator to find a recipe.  In the end, I decided that I didn't really want to go the pectin route, but luckily I ran into this generalized chart for jam making.  

I do a lot of recipe adjusting in order to fit the amount of ingredients I already have.  I know you're not really supposed to, but hey what can I say?  I'm just a rebel, baby.  Anyway the chart calls for equal parts berries and sugar, so it was a pretty simple modification.  As I remember, I had about 3/4 of a cup of crushed blackberries, but I made a full cup by adding some blueberries.  

I had a pretty small yield, two not quite full jars.  And of course I took one of the jars to the neighbors, as that seemed only fair.  I finally got around to trying this today, and it was actually very good.  I definitely overcooked it, which is easy to do in such a small batch, but it wasn't ruined.  The seeds are in there which is only moderately annoying.  I think I'd probably strain those out next time.

Oh, and there will be a next time.  I'm sicking Hubs on those spiders next year man.  No eight-legged spawn of Satan is going to keep me from delicious jams and preserves!  Well, at least not as long as I've got my knight in shining armor (or dork in tin foil) around to ward them off...

Cucawhats?

I think I've mentioned this before, but we have kickass neighbors.  They're an older couple who have lived in their house for upwards of 30 or 40 years.  Apparently the family that owned the house before they did had a son who participated in boyscouts.  For one of his merit badges he planted and cultivated a blueberry bush, and that blueberry bush is now approximately 70 years old.  This is the monster:

The bush, the plant, the legend.

Right?  Pretty insane.  That's not a shed in the background.  It's a mansion.  No, okay, it's a shed.  But either way, as far as blueberries go, we're packin heat.

Anyway, this post is not so much about the berry bush.  In fact, far stranger things are on the horizon.  Whilst harvesting the other day, I noticed an unusual vine using the bush its personal trellis.  The leaves resembled that of a grapevine, but had flowers that looked tiny cucumber flowers, and what seemed to be teeeeeeeeeny tiny watermelons sprouting all willy nilly in every direction.  WHAT THE DEUCE?!

See?

I went inside, cut one of the fruits open, and it smelled of cucumbery goodness.  I wanted to eat one, but Hubs was all "I dunno, that could be poisonous" and my mom was in my head screaming "You could die!!!" so instead I went to the internet.

I googled (I shit you not) the following things:

• Fake cucumbers
• Poisonous cucumbers
• Cucumber look-a-like
• Mini cucumber
• Cucumber vine

Well I finally hit on something.  Apparently there are several types of tiny cucumbers.  Or maybe there aren't many types, but just many names.  Or there are many names for each of the many types of tiny cucumbers.  I think that's it.  It's full government is Melothria Scabra, and some of its aliases include Cucamelons, Mexican Sour Gherkins, Mouse Melons, Sanditas (my favorite, it means little watermelon in Spanish), and so on.  It tastes like a cucumber that has had lemon juice spritzed on it, but most importantly, it's INCREDIBLY CUTE AND NOT POISONOUS.  

(I think I've maxed out my caps usage for one post.)

Little cuke cut open.

The weest of wee flowers, soon to produce another sandita!

Can you imagine the adorable pickles these will make?

Anyway, I thought I'd share this marvel of nature.  Keep your eyes peeled, you never know what you might stumble across!  We also later found several blackberry bushes and muscadine grapevines in their backyard too.  An orchard they didn't even intend, how wild is that?  (Literally...muahahah)

Also always be very certain of what you're putting into your body.  One of the only reason I trusted my internet judgement on this was because there are apparently no poisonous fake cucumber look a likes out there, so I felt pretty safe.  

Happy hunting!