Watermelons From Some Crazy Whim!

What an incredible morning to wake up and step out on the porch to view. You’d think it was Spring, all over again! Gentle breeze with cool temps – the sky is that perfect blue with beautiful white fluffy clouds. Sunshine just bringing out the best in all the color! And I don’t seem to be the only one noticing. The birds are all over the place here, this morning! Even had several Cardinals getting busy with the sunflowers – right along with a few Yellow Canary Finches. The Hummingbirds are back after taking a slight break elsewhere – feuding over the feeders, of course! (click photos for larger view) Beautiful – isn’t it! Yeah… But around 4:30pm today – it won’t seem quite as beautiful to me for a while. It’s my turn to mow. Ta! And you just took a look at about one-third of the job. Funny how photos can be a little deceiving. See that area darkened by the trees on the right. Oh, it’s dark, alright! It’s what we call ‘The Hole’. That Dallas grass is thicker than all get-out! And the incline fights pretty hard with trying to turn the area into a bog. Just a tad bit to this side of staying away from being constantly mushy. But we’ve had a few times when the wish for sitting on a 4-wheeler at the moment crossed our minds! Takes a little finesse’ to make that tractor-mower crawl back up outta there! Luckily – we will be saying ‘Bye-Bye’ to The Hole next year! Once we get the barn down and relocated we’ll begin on some major shifting of dirt and soil. The goal is to level out the area a little more – and redirect rainwater away from the house, as well! I’ve been given fair warning – that’s my chance to design a layout for the entire area to the left of where the barn sits now. I spent time working on a layout about my little watermelon patch after Dwayne headed to work yesterday. Back in Texas – everybody knows the repercussions from busting open an ice-cold watermelon and getting busy with it outside. Let one seed hit that San Augustine grass. It will find the dirt! Never fails! I bought a watermelon last year and brought it home. Both of us were totally surprised to find it was a yellow-meat watermelon when we sliced it open! Neither of us has had such a treat since we were kids. Naturally – the gardening horns came out and my first thought was to save seeds! Knowing our Navajo thornless Blackberry bushes would be a few years before they’re grown enough to yield enough for canning – I decided to let them share their area with watermelon this year. I started out planting five seeds. Took no time at all before deciding we better sacrifice some plants. Went down from five to two. Now I’m thinking I should have just saved one! But even with just the two plants I’ve had to get out there and thin out the runners. I’ll bet I cut the life short on a half-dozen babies. But last week the count became so confusing that I got a wild hair idea. Took a Sharpie pen out there and gave everybody a number. HA! I’ve ended up finding five more babies after a week of all the rain we’ve received. But I’m pinching off anymore that come along. These puppies are huge. And keeping the count down will benefit growth and success. Funny thing about the size these are putting out. That watermelon I bought in the grocery store was only half as big. Now – just how do you think that happened? LOL Mass planting – chemicals to force production – Oh, who knows what else they do to mess up a natural wonder! Anyway – here’s my finished work. It was almost 2am before I managed to get this posted on FaceBook for Kimberly. This kit gave me a challenge! She did some awesome work on some of the papers that causes a 3-D effect. And I just had to go with it! Numerous attempts at adding more embellishing just stole away from the shadow-box appeal. So – I finally gave it up and signed off! Like I said earlier – photos can be so deceiving. Measured the largest one this morning. Length is 18 inches from end to end. And when I wrapped that tape measure around that puppy – I felt wonderful about my shrinking waistline! I was stunned to see my fingers come around to 36 inches! It’ll take using the wheelbarrow to get it up to the house. I know it weighs over 14 pounds. The stem is beginning to wane – so I know it’s just about ready! Funny how a watermelon can make me feel so excited. But there’s a reason. I only decided to make this first go at growing the darn things – purely out of a wild hair whim! Kit - Ladybugs and Daisies - created by Kimberly Stewart at Scrapbook-elements.com Get the Ladybugs and Daisies Alphabet Here!