October Watermelon

 The thought of moving in August or September has always been terrible to me.

My brother and his family did this recently, though I don't feel bad for them. I feel bad for the family who left behind a lovely garden. It wasn't huge...probably 15 feet square...but it was at its peak. They had done the work of planting, and watering, and weeding. They had set up trellises and staked tomatoes. They had done all the work only to walk a way from the reward...several productive tomato plants, hot and bell peppers, enormous Japanese cucumbers climbing a lovely trellis, brussels sprout stalks, and over a dozen watermelons. 

On my first visit to my brother's new house, my husband took our 4-year-old nephew out to the garden and picked much of the produce, including one watermelon. It was September and it seemed a little early for these watermelons but there were so many and our nephew was excited to try it, so we picked one. When we cut it open it was barely even pink but it was still fun to do. We didn't think too much more about this and made cucumber salad and used the tomatoes and peppers to make salsa.

A few weeks later I visited again and one of the first things my nephew asked was if I remembered picking the watermelon and asked if we could do it again. We waited for the rain to stop and went outside with his younger sister. He was excited to pick which watermelon we would try today. What he selected was good-sized, easily larger than his newborn baby brother and not far behind his 19-month sister. We lugged it inside and this time it turned out to be perfectly ripe on October 13th.

We don't usually think of watermelon season being in October, but truthfully it's hard to get them ripe in Ohio much before this. Particularly if you sow your seeds directly into the ground, or if you're growing a larger variety. It was rainy and a bit chilly when we had it, but my nephew happily ate over a quarter of it and told me watermelon is his favorite vegetable.

When I made it home that evening I couldn't figure out why my phone was sticky. Later I was surprised to find this picture of watermelon pieces in my photo reel. My nephew likes to borrow phones and take pictures of what he loves (last time it was 35 pictures of his dog). So thank you, previous home owners, for being okay with leaving behind the fruit of your labor to share with a young boy. He has gotten to experience how things grow and change, and learned to love a new fruit - or vegetable if you ask him.