The Melon Report

Not all of our plants are struggling with the dry weather we've been having. Heat-loving melons are taking advantage:


These are the leaves and a few blossoms of one of our cantaloupe plants. I took this photo the day we got back from New Jersey. I was inspired to grab the camera because all the leaves were ringed with tiny, perfect raindrops. We had never seen anything like it — it was really beautiful. These plants took off in the heat we had while we were on vacation, and we came back to much bigger vines and tons of small, yellow blossoms. We also spied our first melon: 


It gets bigger every day, but it's still green. This is our first time out with cantaloupe, so I'm not sure how much longer we still have to go. 

The watermelons also really spread out while we were away:


Before we left, these were still fairly compact, but now they are vining and have blossoms as well. Yesterday afternoon I spotted our first watermelon:


It is about the size of an egg right now, so I'm pretty sure we're a good month away from edible fruit. We only tried watermelon once before back at the Red House, and a groundhog ate all the seedlings as soon as they'd pop up, so eventually we just gave up. Nothing here seems to be hungry for melons or their leaves.

At least not yet, anyway.

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