The honeyloupe

I've been going outside and checking the nestbox every half hour or so since I got that first egg 3 days ago. Still no second egg. I think the Rhode Island Red will start laying really soon. I'm getting nervous because I'm going to be leaving town in a couple weeks and I'll be gone for over two weeks and I'm afraid I'll miss a chicken's first egg (or at this rate, Nightcrawler's second egg).

I went into the garden this morning and saw Nightcrawler making a huge mess out of one of my raised garden beds. A small watermelon plant has completely vanished. I assume she ate it, so this weekend looks like it will involve some quality time at Home Depot buying fence-making materials. I've been picking a lot of cucumbers. Each one of these large Armenian cucumbers yields between 10 and 14 cups of sliced cucumbers (peeled and seeds removed). I've been making vats of cucumber salad and I think I'll try pickling them somehow, though I don't think the texture is right to be good for that. Have I mentioned that I don't even like cucumbers?

I picked this honeydew the other day:

only to slice it open and confirm that I had planted it WAY too close to my cantaloupe vines:


Oh well, even though it was orange instead of pale green, it tasted fantastic. Like a vanilla sugar cookie!