Blackberries, watermelons and bunnies

Check out these blackberry vines at our favorite berry patch....our first picking was very early...walked lots of rows to get a couple of little cartons of ripe berries.    Vines were LOADED!   Second picking, we learned...don't go on a Saturday afternoon....berry scavengers had already cleaned up.   Hopefully will pick this week, on a Wednesday this time (luckily the patch is closed Monday and Tuesday) and pick our fill of this seasonal fruit.  

Moving on to watermelons.... what's your secret to picking a ripe one?   After googling the subject, some pointers I found were....make sure the bottom (ground side) is yellow, dry twisted stem, hollow sound with thumping (or beating) and making a scratch with your fingernail on the rind.   If you can see white under the scratch, it's ripe (or so they say).   So I must have scratched half a huge box of melons in the grocery....secretly hoping no one was watching.   I tried to be very inconspicuous....and I only made one scratch per melon...So this is what I came home with.

Yellow bottom - check

No stem.....no check

See my scratch???   Told you I was inconspicuous!

 

 

 

 

And voila....ripe melon!   Of course, tasting the "heart" is the first step!

So, with watermelons on my mind, here's my first melon in our garden  (actually I think it might be a cantaloupe....the vines are all mixed up)...

Enter this....

Now...don't get me wrong....bunnies are cute....but only outside the garden!   The garden was enclosed but it didn't take Bunny long to squeeze through the fence squares for his escape.  Stay tuned....