dance of the scarecrow

Our garden is overgrown with watermelon vines. With the exception of one watermelon that grew hanging inside the bird netting the remaining fruit have sprouted on the outside of the protective enclosure. The inside watermelon fell off it's vine before it was ripe as it became too heavy for the vine to hold. In case you were wondering, white, unripe watermelon tastes a little like cucumber.


The melons outside the bird netting face a yet another foe. When I find a melon hanging on the side of the netting I rearrange the vine and fruit so that they rest on the metal roof of the garden. This solves the getting too big for the vine problem but being outside the netting leaves the produce unprotected from the host of birds who consider watermelon in the desert a tasty treat.

We've lost several small melons to the birds but have managed to shield a couple by putting buckets upside down over the melon. One melon had almost outgrown it's bucket and after checking it one day I didn't get the bucket down to cover the entire fruit.

The next day I found the birds had discovered the exposed area and dug a pretty good size hole into the soft pink flesh.

Even though it could have used a day or two more to fully ripen we picked the melon and removed the area that had been pecked.

Our first fruit...juicy, firm, lightly sweet taste. Pretty good even if we did have to share it with the birds.