There is something to be said for whimsy

Only my parents would send me a picture of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich made with a tomato that spans the entire slice of Wonder Bread. The tomato, of the heirloom Brandywine variety, came from their garden this summer. Too bad they didn't send me a picture of the aforementioned sandwich being eaten, with mayo and tomato juice dribbling down my father's arm. That would classic.

The also sent me pictures of their watermelons. My parents are not serious gardeners, and most of their agricultural success has come from whims. When I was in high school, my father labored for an entire week in record heat to lay out beds for asparagus. He wouldn't garner his first harvest for three years, but on that whim, my parents had asparagus with nearly every Easter ham for several years after that first random thought of hollandaise covered spears popped into my father's head. The same can be said for the year he decided to plant hot peppers. We kept one Indian family of pepperheads in habaneros for an entire summer, not to mention a cabinet full of pepper jelly and several jars of salsa. I can also recall the summer of pumpkins, when Dad decided to plant pumpkins and wound up with two beauties that weighed over 100 pounds each and were the talk of every trick-or-treater on Halloween night. We brazenly left them out on the porch, smug in knowing that any punk teen-ager trying to smash my father's babies would give himself a premature hernia trying to heft the enormous squash out into the street.

This year has been the year of watermelon whimsy, and there they lie on the ground, fat zeppelins of juicy red goodness. As mama told me tonight, "We have tomatoes coming out the wazoo, and the neighbors are beside themselves over our watermelon patch." I can just see it, right now, with late summer sunlight coaxing the crickets and the cicadas into song while my parents sit outside in their lawn chairs, red watermelon juice trickling down their arms while they spit seeds into the grass. Like any good Southerner, I am sure the folks at church and my parents' neighbors are getting bags full of 'maters and a couple slices of watermelon.

Maybe I can convince Dad to try something more exotic next summer, and something that can easily be shipped cross country. I'd be happy with a watermelon, so I could sit outside on the patio and have red watermelon juice trickle down my arm as I spit seeds into the grass.