Watermelon

Petite Yellow Watermelon

How do you tell when a watermelon is ripe?

One clue may be size.
This is supposed to be the size for a small family.
It should fit in a refrigerator.
Looks ripe to me.

It weighs 20 pounds - gotta be a hungry small family!

The seeds do not look ripe. 

It's juicy, but the flavor has not fully developed.

The seeds are immature.

The chickens will love it.

Fortunately, there are more melons ripening.

Another sign that it's ripe is when the stem dries.
This stem was not dry.
We'll have to see if that becomes a better clue that it's ripe.

Pasta with Shrimp and Fresh Tomatoes

This is fresh tomato season.
Tonight is a tossed fresh tomato sauce for pasta.
I used one large Golden Queen tomato and one large Cherokee Purple.
Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley and basil.
 

I asked D to get me a red onion from the onion patch.
This is what he brought.

Two beautiful Redwing onions!
(And a WallaWalla for later.)

 Added chopped red onion and shrimp and garlic.
A bit of olive oil and black pepper, and it's ready.

This is the kind of meal where I wish I had an extra stomach or two!

 

spider - black and yellow argiope

We found this large black and yellow spider in the weeds along the path behind the barn.

According to: http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/black_and_yellow_argiope.htm

"The Black and Yellow Argiope is a common orb web spider. Orb web means it spins a web like a circle.

Female spiders are much larger than males, growing almost an inch and a half long. Males grow about 3/4 inch long. Both spiders have a cephalothorax (small front body section) with silver hairs on it. The abdomen (large back section) is egg-shaped with black and yellow coloring.

Legs of these spiders are black with red or yellow bands. Each leg has three claws on the end.

Black and Yellow Argiopes live in fields and gardens. They can be found on shrubs, tall plants, and flowers.

The web of this spider spirals out from the center and can be two feet across. The female builds the large web, and a male will build a smaller web on the outer part of her web. The male's web is a thick zig-zag of white silk."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was still there the next day, but the wrapped prey from yesterday is gone.

 

Raw Tomato Sauce

This is the first raw sauce of the summer.
Delicious!

 Linguini is tossed with butter and olive oil.

Sauce is two kinds of tomato, oil, garlic, basil, parsley.

This is a great summer meal - a cross between a pasta dinner and salad.

Costoluto Tomato

This Costoluto Tomato is an heirloom tomato of Italian ancestry.
It's a smallish tomato, with strong flavor.
The skin is slightly tough, compared to other heirlooms.

We've had very uneven rain this spring and summer.
That has led to some cracking and some blossom end rot.
This is the first summer in the last three years that we have been able to harvest some before late blight set in.  We're keeping fingers crossed, since we have used up all the sauces I canned in 2008.

First Tomatoes and Fennel

We had our first tomatoes today.
On the left is Cherokee Purple.
It's juicy and slightly acidic.  Our favorite.

On the right is Golden Queen.
Slightly sweeter - but not too sweet.

 I sliced them for tasting.

With the rest,  I made raw spaghetti sauce.
Chop tomatoes,
garlic, and basil.  Add olive oil.
Serve at room temperature
over hot buttered linguini.


 For the first time, we grew fennel.