Happiness Is an Unexpected Yellow Watermelon (from Poland by Way of Italy)

Yellow!  My watermelons are yellow inside!  I heard the tell-tale snap that tells me the watermelon is ready when I stuck my knife into this one, but I didn't see any red when I peeked in and thought, once again, that I had picked it too early.  But then, yellow!  I had forgotten about the seeds I planted from Poland that I bought from an Italian seed company at a local Italian market here in the United States.

I stood there at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at the gold finches hanging from the towering red plumes of amaranth, as is their habit, as I scooped out little melon balls and picked out the seeds with a knife.  I remembered how my mom used to do that (picked out the seeds, not hung from the amaranth), and realized it had been a while since we've had a watermelon with seeds.  There are probably children growing up right now who have never even seen watermelon seeds because the supermarket seems to sell mostly seedless ones.  And so, of course, I saved them, along with the seeds from the cantaloupe that fell off the vine the same day. 

"I'm working on your hope chest," I told my older daughter.  "So far, there are sunflower, butternut squash, yellow watermelon, and cantaloupe seeds." (Her hope chest will need to be in the ice chest, of course, since, in addition to growing these each year, I can vacuum-seal and freeze some of these seeds in order for them to last long enough for her to need them.)

"Lemon cucumber?" she asked.

I had forgotten to save lemon cucumber seeds, even though we had truly a bumper crop of them this year.  But one vine is still growing.  So, as always, there's still hope.

For more about watermelons (and the surprising things they teach us), see Give Me Patience and Give It to Me Now (p. 145) and The Lesson of the White Watermelon (p. 146) in my book.

Happiness Is an Unexpected Yellow Watermelon (from Poland by Way of Italy)