Allsweet - Finding sweet boredom in the watermelon patch
Francis Harvey
I planted a seed at the start of last spring. It was a watermelon seed—this particular zeppelin-shaped varietal goes by the name of Allsweet. I poked it knuckle-deep into the soft soil outside my back door. I’d pretty much forgotten about it when, weeks later, I first spotted its sprout nudging up from underground. It’s amazing how quickly it grew. One morning its baby leaves were still fused like palms in prayer, the next I looked out my kitchen window to see a funky green carpet unfurling across my yard.
I’d been cautioned by a Green Thumb friend of mine that this would probably happen. Watermelons, like pumpkins and cucumbers, tend to take over—they’re enthusiastic! Nature is like that; just give it the space and it won’t stop till it’s all tangled full of green. I didn’t sweat it. I loved watching it reaching into every corner, curling up against the house and the back fence. In time, my Allsweet would grow to become a hefty companion. Every evening, after busy days spent earning, I’d go out to see how she was doing, stroke her furry leaves, smell the delicate honey of her flowers budding and blooming, wilting and falling, till they were eventually replaced by promising green nubs.
The hot season was so wet that I didn’t really need to do anything. All I could contribute was patience. This was more difficult than I first reckoned. In a world that insists on relentless action, growing melons presented me with an entirely pointless challenge. There was nothing I could do about it. In a matter of months, my favourite fruit managed to teach me the kind of patience a lifetime of thinking and talking could never touch. I recommend it to anyone out there with a spare square of soil and a high-stress day job. That melon patch had a capacity to guide me back to a charming, drowsy boredom I’d otherwise imagined was lost to childhood.
By midsummer, my idleness began paying off. Under the sun, with a kind of languorous ease, a crop of melons began to swell seductively. Patience soon became challenging, and more necessary by the day. I knew the longer I held off the sweeter they’d be. Still, I checked each melon carefully, running my hand over their warm, marbled rinds. According to the same Green Thumb, you can tell a watermelon is ripe when you give its juicy green rump a slap and it sounds thick and hollow. Listening is key.
In the short month of February, that vine pulled five fat Allsweets out of thin air and sunshine. I was proud and impressed… and hungry. They live up to their name—all sweet, and crunchy and studded with black seeds. As I munched down each melon, I spat those seeds all over my yard in the hope that, come next year, a fresh crop might spring up all on its own. Melons are like that; they want to grow.
