Garden Tales

Because I was 7 months pregnant during planting season, I haven't put much effort into the garden this year. John has been pruning the blackberry and raspberry canes and gathering a bumper crop of berries, but I've hardly set foot in our little plot this year.

Elias, on the other hand, loves going outside with Daddy to help pick berries. He gets his own cup (a quart-sized yogurt container), but it usually ends up on the ground, empty, as Elias claws his way through the overgrown berry patch ("the woods", in Eliasese) stuffing raspberries in his mouth. We also have a small strawberry patch this year which has only had a few berries. I made the mistake of pointing out an immature strawberry on one of the plants to Elias, and he snuck over, picked it and popped the white fruit in his mouth, declaring that it tasted "yummy". Since that incident, John has been particularly watchful when Elias gets too close to the strawberry plants, warning him sternly DO NOT PICK THE BERRIES. So Elias just leans over and bites the ends of the berries off without actually removing them from the plants. He's either very naughty or overly literal, you decide.

But back to our neglected garden. Luckily my mom was here during June and July and couldn't stand to see the ground lying fallow, so she went out and threw some seeds down. You've already seen the 10 foot tall sunflowers she planted (did I mention my mom's green thumb is about the size of the Statue of Liberty's?).

While she was here, she planted some watermelon seeds, which of course sprouted and spread vines prodigiously. As of this past weekend, we had about 5 or 6 little melons growing. One had reached about 8 inches in diameter, which is the appropriate size for a mature Sugar Baby watermelon. The melon sounded wonderfully hollow when thumped, and though the tendril nearest the melon hadn't dried up (a secondary sign of ripeness), we decided it was time for the harvest.

Grandpa John - in Pennsylvania with Grandma Linda for a weekend visit - helped Elias carry it back to the house and into the kitchen:

Elias was so excited to have fresh watermelon, he ran into the dining room and climbed up into his booster seat to await his bounty. Alas, we cut the melon open and found the flesh was still a milky white, with only a hint of red around the seeds:

Because Elias was still waiting patiently for his melon, I had no choice but to cut a piece of the unripe melon and serve it to him. He bit into it and made a funny face that was a cross between disgust and betrayal - "This isn't watermelon," he spat, putting it down on his placemat. While I could've disagreed with him on technical grounds, I apologized and we went to play with his trains.