Summer Memories

 One of the great joys of summer are the melons!  

On Friday a neighbor messaged me and said they had a bunch of watermelons and did we want any. 

Yes!  Of course!  Ha!  Who can turn down a free watermelon? They also had a pile of cantaloupe too, so I got a couple of those. 

Both Gary and I have lots of fun memories surrounding melons. Back when we were kids there was no such thing as seedless watermelon, so almost invariably as kids we ended up outside with a wedge of watermelon so we could spit the seeds out into the yard. We of course would have to listen to our parents telling us to be careful and not swallow the seeds or else we'd grow vines out of our ears!

I distinctly remember that my mom would give my dad a large round slice from the center of the melon in a plate and he would sit and eat it with a spoon. 

Now, cantaloupe was a different story of course. The ones we got back then weren't huge. I vaguely remember that half of one was about the size of a cereal bowl maybe. Mom would buy 2 or 3 of them. We would cut them in half, scoop out the seeds and then fill the halves with vanilla ice cream. We'd each get a half. I think even my dad may have indulged in ice cream at that time. Usually he would avoid any form of sugar. 

When we were finished with the melons, whichever type we had, we'd take the seeds and rinds out to the chickens and let them peck at what little we had left. They loved it. 

Such fun memories of childhood.