Bonus Goodies

These are lots of baby rockmelons I've just discovered in the veggie patch. I grew these plants from seed generously donated by the 'volunteer' rockmelon that suddenly appeared among the spring onions last summer. It flourished and produced two fruit - and very tasty they were, too. I saved the seeds, not at all sure they'd be fertile, but they were. Fortunately I had transplanted them and put up a trellis for them to climb on before I broke the bone in my foot which has left me booted and unable to do more than hobble for the last five weeks.

During that time they've been flowering prolifically but until today I hadn't realised that they had fruit forming because the injury has meant I really can't do much in the garden. This is frustrating in the extreme with doing a little hand watering about my limit since I'm not allowed to get the boot either wet or dirty. Pisces has kept up with the watering as best he can but he's not a gardener so the mulch and sheep manure I'd bought just before disaster struck is still sitting in its respective piles and asking him to check what's happening to plants is pretty much pointless. There's no doubt the garden is suffering but there's little I can do about that other than to go out and pick whatever is ripe and within reach of the path and try not to look at the things that are dying. Even that probably doesn't qualify as keeping off my foot as much as possible but hey, it's bad enough not to be able to work in the garden. I need some connection.

Anyhow if I hadn't been doing that I wouldn't have discovered the baby melons, would I? They currently range in size from one as big as a tennis ball to others no bigger than my thumb nail - and there are a lot of them, far more than I anticipated. The thing is because I hadn't realised that they were there I hadn't put any fruit fly baits around - or rather I hadn't got Pisces to put them around. Last year we weren't troubled by the dreaded Mediterranean fruit fly but this year we've already found them in some of the tomatoes. While that's no longer a problem since the tomatoes have all died - no idea why because I can't get out into the garden - melons definitely can get infested, too, so we now have baits 'decorating' the garden. Fingers crossed I'm not too late.