Gardening in south Georgia has not been a series of unalloyed triumphs. The difference between this and my entire previous experience is complete. Surefire winners in a Maine garden languish here, beets and peas and lettuce for instance, and some things didn’t even germinate in the baking sand.
Nonetheless there are some consolations, viz., melons.
These are Golden Gopher and Hannah’s Choice muskmelons and they are fantastic. The inimitable CR Lawn at Fedco Seeds hyperbolizes both varieties and he’s right. The heat and sand bring out the perfumey notes of the flavors and the cooling refreshment on a summer day can’t be beat. Hooray for melons.
I have watermelons in too though they are still a couple of weeks from ripe. While I’ve had good luck in Maine the last two years with watermelons I was never happy with the flavor and I’m looking forward to these. The time I spent in Mexico really spoiled me for watermelons. Agua de sandia, which appears on Thursdays for some reason, at least in Oaxaca restaurants, is one of my favorite summer treats. Agua de melon (Tuesdays as I remember) is wonderful too.
Besides the great spreading tree of flowers there is the wafting scent of crepe myrtle, the loud humming of bees, the combined vocal efforts of the chickens ( pullets; Egg! Egg! I laid an Egg!, rooster; the usual ) and the heat, the heat. After weeks of occasional bloom this, our largest crepe myrtle, exploded in snowy bloom and the bees are very excited. It makes the chicken pen ornamental to an astonishing degree with a drift of pure white petals like snow
.
