La Première Morsure du Melon

"Men and melons are hard to know." ~ Benjamin Franklin

The Charentais melon laid waiting for me in the midst of a tangle of vines. There were others, including watermelon babies, but this canteloupe looked different. It was pale yellow while its siblings sported a shade of gray-green. I looked at it for a bit, then contemplated whether it was announcing, "Pick me."

I thumped it. No hollow sound. Wait, that only works for watermelons. I tugged on it and it wouldn't let go without a fight. I sniffed it. Mmmmmmmm... Okay, that did it and I broke it from the umbilical cord holding it to its life support, which by now was a shriveling thread with the strength of heavy-duty fishing line. I wondered how nutrients and water could course through such pinched veins, but it's just one of the mysteries of plant life, and come to think of it, maybe that's why the melon was turning yellow.

Romie took it inside, poised it on the cutting board, and with one fell swoop of the knife, it was split and spilled forth guts of juice and seeds. What was left were two perfect halves of ambrosial sweetness. One for Romie, one for me.

I wish I didn't have to wait a whole year to have this summer treat, but Charentais melons (Cucumis melo var. cantalupensis 'Savor'), a French hybrid, have tender skins and don't transport well. Unless a local grower supplies the grocery store, you likely won't find them there. So we grow them ourselves. I don't know that I'd consider them far superior to the Indiana melons we're used to around here, but they're good enough that I'd recommend trying to grow your own.

Growing melons takes a lot of space, what with the extensive network of vines that results from planting them. We marked out a plot for them this year with a few treated landscape timbers that Romie scavenged from the steel delivery trucks at his work. Once the hills were planted, I laid lightweight landscape fabric over the growing area and cut out holes for the hills. This way, precious moisture would be slower to evaporate under it and the melons wouldn't have to sit on the ground directly and perhaps rot.

It was a good plan. We've got several canteloupe and watermelon working their way to our plates right now. It's always a problem for me to decide when they're ripe though. How DO you figure that out anyway? There's nothing worse than to pick an unripe melon and be filled with remorse over what might have been. Well, okay, there are worse things, but I hate it when that happens. It's such a waste.


I did find some guidelines for knowing when to pick canteloupe:

• The best indicator is smell. The melon's fragrance should make your mouth water. It's overripe if it has a strong musky smell.

• Look for a slight color change from gray-blue to cream, but don't wait for the rind to turn orangish; by then the melon will be overripe.

• The melon may slip (detach) from the vine and still taste good, but often it's overripe at this point. Normally, you want to pick a melon before it slips.

Johnny's Selected Seeds recommends examining the smallish, long-stemmed leaf attached to the vine at the same point as the fruit. When fruit is ripe, the leaf is pale.

Had that first canteloupe for breakfast this morning. It's as good as I remembered.

A Garden Full of Sunshine

There is a small plot at the north end of all of the rest of the gardens at the back of our property where I've designated space for annuals. I grow them other places, but with the exception of some very bright asiatic lilies, everything that grows in this spot gets planted fresh every year. This is only the second year that we've had this bed, but I doubt it will ever be as pretty as it is this year. It's so vibrant and alive, you nearly need sunglasses to look at it.

The first thing you'll notice is the cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus 'Ladybird Mix'). Due to a mix-up on my part - mark this down - I was wrong! - I thought I'd planted marigolds here and when these started blooming I thought I could like marigolds again.

Then Kim and Alyssa alerted me to the fact that these are cosmos, and that's why I thought they looked like cosmos. Because they are!
I did plant some marigolds ('Disco Mix'), but they apparently didn't come up and that's why I have a big blank spot elsewhere in the garden. It's the place where the marigolds aren't growing.



I will, for the rest of my life, plant these cosmos. The color hues of these things are just right and they don't get ridiculously tall and flop over like other cosmos I've grown. They bloom like crazy, and keep doing it. They're show-stoppers and heartbreakingly cheerful.



Next to the marigolds are zinnias that are a mix that I put together. If you recall, I don't care for pink zinnias, so I bought individual colors and mixed the seeds together.


Behind the zinnias and the marigolds are the lipstick red hardy gladiolus 'Atom' (Gladiolus x hortulanus).I grew these last year, too, but they were tucked in behind the cosmos and zinnias that I'd mixed together that grew like they were on steroids, so we didn't get to enjoy them unless I cut them and put them in a vase (which I did).

They're charming and delicate, looking more like a species-type version of traditional glads, and with a picotee white edge. Though they're called hardy, they aren't in our zone (5), so I have to lift them in the fall and store them through winter, but they're worth the effort.












To the left of these are more zinnias (Zinnia haageana), this time 'Chippendale.' They look sort of like marigolds - the kind I don't particularly like - but I love these! Go figure. I grew these last year also, and I saved the seed so that I could grow them again this year. They appear in a delightful mix of oranges, reds, and golds and the flower heads are quite small, being about an inch-and-a-half in diameter and 12-18 inches tall overall.



Behind 'Chippendale' is a mix of sunflowers (Helianthus sp.). I tried to plant shorter varieties this year than last, but I don't know what happened. They're taller than ever. One is even at nine feet right now.

The birds and the bees love these. When the petals fall off, I cut the flower heads off and lay them on a small utility table we keep nearby for when we use the fire pit. The birds don't care if the heads are attached to the stems, judging by the amount of the seed shells on that table!

I've got some cannas planted in this bed, too, but they aren't blooming yet. This is the first year I've ever grown them. I remember how my dad grew them in a circular garden between our house and my grandma's when she lived next door. They were bright red and there were lots of them. They were always so pretty. I chose 'Lippo' and 'Gaiety' which are each a yellow and red combination.



Now somehow I managed to sink some dahlias ('Peaches & Cream') in here at some point, but I forgot that I had planted them, so I now have these dahlias blooming and they don't really go with anything else here, but I'm not about to dig them up now.







In the middle of all this is a dead pine tree, which is all that is left of a sapling that Kara brought home when she was in the sixth grade (1991-92). It grew very quickly and became a lovely tree until it decided to die two years ago. Instead of cutting it all the way down, Romie left about four feet of it and we put a decorative birdhouse on top of it that my mom didn't want anymore. This spring, wrens made a nest inside the birdhouse and raised their family there.

Below that are directional markers painted in bright colors with the names of towns where family live and how far they are away from here.








I planted cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) by seed at the base and it is now climbing up and around the tree.









This is just how I envisioned this part of the garden, but I'm rather surprised that it turned out this well. I wanted something that screamed "SUMMER!" and for me, this does it. And you probably won't be surprised to find out that the hummingbirds approve, too.

89° and Snow

We're having those 'dog days' of summer you hear about. Hot and sultry and the air stagnates. You can wake up in the morning bounding with energy and five minutes outside zaps it right out of you. The air is as thick as pudding and sends you running back to the comfort of air conditioning.

Dog days got their name because of the constellation Canis Major (Big Dog), which contains the star Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. In late July, Sirius coincides with the sun and the ancients believed it added to the heat of the sun, making summer days extra hot. So for twenty days before and after, the period of intense heat became known as 'dog days.' Today, dog days occur between July 3rd and August 11th. The exact dates change a bit over time as the earth and stars gradually drift.

So, while dog days have nothing to do with dogs, it's still hot, but here in the flatlands of Ohio, we've got snow!

Euphorbia marginata ('Kilimanjaro') is commonly known as Snow On the Mountain and is an annual I grow every year from seed. It grows smack dab in the middle of Max's Garden and right about now it's glowing. At night, as I look out our second-story bedroom window on a moonlit night, I can see it in all its whiteness, when I can make out nothing else in the garden.

The flowers are quite small and it's the white-margined leaves (bracts) that really make this plant a standout in the garden. It grows quite tall, reaching three feet or more in my garden.

Though it's an annual, Snow On the Mountain will self-seed and if I'd let all the seed pods fall last year instead of collecting most of them, I wouldn't have had to plant any seeds at all this spring. Many of the plants you see in the picture above came up as a result of self-seeding.

A word of caution about this beauty, though. Its milky sap is very irritating to the skin for some people and can cause burn-like blistering when exposed to it, so handle with care!


*Canis Major sky graphic from All The Sky