My son the farmer...

...planted some watermelon seeds in our garden this year. Rather late, too -- toward the end of June. I have never managed to get watermelon from seed to table in my life, so I tried not to raise any expectations. What the heck, let's see what happens.

Well, by September there were four good-sized "moon and stars" watermelon in our garden, looking tantalizing. I brought one in and cut it open. Still white inside. I was devastated -- no chance for that one to ripen any further. 3 weeks later I took another one and split it -- just starting to turn pink.

So I wrote the other two off -- no chance for them to ripen before frost. I left them til frost killed the vines, then brought them in -- about two weeks before halloween. I figured if they didn't have a long enough season to ripen, we could carve them for jack o'lanterns.

We were stunned when I cut off the tops, and wound up scooping out ripe watermelon. I was so not expecting to see pink inside, it was really gorgeous.

The jack o'lanterns turned out ok too...