July has been a burner, y’all. There have been cooler days and there have been real hot ones, but we have this bad habit of comparing weather patterns to that of Colorado, and there’s just no comparing. All I know is the things we coaxed out of the ground near the mountains is rubbish compared to our luck right here in the nation’s bread basket. (Are we in the “bread basket”? Off to google)
We couldn’t wait any longer and picked our first sugar baby watermelon. He didn’t seem to be getting any larger. He wasn’t very ripe on the inside, which was disappointing, so we pinky promised we wouldn’t pick the rest until they were soft at the vine and begging to be harvested.
I hammocked our precious melons with hangers and mesh fabric per all the YouTube experts in Asia (who grow melons prolifically with bare feet, buckets, quaint instrumental music and zero narration) and we waited.
We checked on them every day, multiple times a day.
And then, this morning. Enter menacing feeling of doom. The cantaloupe which was to be our first pride and joy…wasn’t there. I thought to myself what would Nate the Great do?
So we looked around the yard for a mangled melon and blamed our dog. Joe found the melon hidden in the squash a few feet from the vine on which it grew. Teeth marks (or other animal gouging) were present. We decided we must make the best of it, so we cut him open and
SURPRISE! It was ripe enough to eat. The dog (or other culpable thief) must’ve known. Minnie cowered as I accused her—appropriately guilty.
Now we’re wondering if we should go ahead and pick the queen of the garden, her majesty Honeydew.
Or wait.
Life’s a gamble.
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