May 18, 2020
Watermelons
In our garden there are these long snaky vines that we keep training to stay out of the peppers, stop invading the carrot patches, and keep your green tendrils off of the zucchini!
They start as wavy delicate yet determined sprouts. Nothing, not even the largest block of rock mud from the bottom of the old dried up pond gets in their way!
BOOM! rock is dust!
RIP! old squash leaf is split!
CRACK! goes the tiny seed starter cup!
Whatever stands in the way, the watermelon seedling bursts through it. Then these once delicate vines turn into a vast network of tangled grass-choking stems. What are they protecting?
The whole life and growth of the watermelon vine is directed to the tiny fragile yellow blossoms. Some female blossoms bear a tiny oval of green at their base. This tiny dimple is what they are destroying all other plant life for? But that tiny dimple grows. It is sheltered under the protective covering of the lacy leaves. This blip becomes a blimp! Swiftly it swells into a gourd that darkens with tiger stripes – if tigers were green.
Watermelons.
Even when conditions are difficult the watermelon plant puts all of it’s effort on building the fruit to maturity.
This plant can’t grow without sunlight, water, and the right nutrients in the soil
It reminds me of life: (here she goes again, more plants and animals that mirror into life *sigh*) HEHEHE… (you should already know this!!)
Anyway, it reminds me of life: we start slowly and cautiously in wherever we are planted, uprooting is a risk, we slowly grow in whatever direction leads us to light and space, we try to smooth the path for those after us, as parents, everything in our lives is focused on leading the next generation to maturity and we can’t do any of that without God.
And that is where my mind wanders as I am counting watermelons on the hills in our little garden…
Thank you for reading (gotcha trapped if you got this far!)
Type at you next time,
~Nancy Tart