First Watermelon
I’ve been meaning to take some pictures of our homegrown watermelons, but still haven’t gotten around to it. The crop has yielded five bouncing baby melons, some seedless and some seedful (a necessity when you grow the seedless kind). The watermelon foliage has snaked its way through the surrounding garden and almost taken over that side of the yard. Obviously it takes a lot energy to make a melon.
We had some friends over on Labor Day for some grillin’ and chillin’, and on that occasion Anne harvested the biggest of the watermelons. My contribution was to subject the melon to the “thump” test to determine ripeness. “Yep,” I declared confidently, “this here’s one ripe melon.” Wrong. That melon made a fool out of me. (No surprise, since it’s the first I ever tested.) When she cut into it, it didn’t look anywhere near ripe. The flesh was very pale, so we didn’t serve it (guests got Klondike bars instead). We tried some ourselves later, and it turned out to be surprisingly sweet and quite edible. Recently, one of Anne’s colleagues suggested an alternative serving suggestion. He thought we should have tapped the melon and injected it with vodka. Party melon! Yeah! Spiked melon balls would certainly liven up any fruit, um, cocktail and help kick things up a notch, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t ruin a perfectly good watermelon. If we ever get some vodka, it might make a worthy experiment.