Look at my melons.

When Bubba and I were at AIDS Walk on Sunday, I nearly tore myself off my bike mid-pedal (with the clip-ins, so it would have been messy) to get at a painfully cute Aussie puppy trotting along with its owners.

Seriously, I cried out. I made grabby hands. The puppy cut across in front of the lucky soul walking him to come toward my magnetic grabby hands. It was very nearly one of those cheesy reunite-y moments where violins play in the background.

Except I stayed on my bike (fucking pedals) and settled for making squeaky I LOVE YOU PUPPY noises in his direction and then probably (definitely) said something like, "Bubb! Did you see that puppy?? How fucking cute is he anyway?!" because I'm very classy and that is what you yell at the top of your lungs when impressionable children and drag queens dressed in leathers are right there.

Bubba, however, was halfway up the hill I was ignoring during my puppy loving moment and didn't hear me. Or, perhaps he didn't want to admit that he was associated with the psycho puppy chasing girl on the orange bike with the paper crown taped to her helmet.

Though, I'm not sure why.

Psycho.

Anyway, I told you that to tell you this: When I saw the first watermelons making their appearance on the vines later that day, I made the same squeaky I LOVE YOU PUPPY noises except I probably (definitely) said something like, "BUBB! Come look at my big melons!"

And then I think I heard my neighbor laughing.

So, that's how my maternal instinct plays out. Some people get all squeaky for human babies, I lose my shit over puppies and watermelons. Plus, it's always fun to make reference to big melons. It's half the reason I grow melons. The other reason is I don't know what. So that Bubba can make reference to my nice big melons, I suppose.

Though for now, the melons are small babies. But WHOA CRAP there are a lot of them. I haven't grown watermelons in a few years and I don't really remember how many babies would appear on the vines, but this one Moon and Stars plant, which was planted at random between the other two melons I was sure were going to die (and are now, of course, totally alive), probably has around a dozen babies on it right now.

Maybe I should have a baby shower. I could go for some cake.

Not really sure what we'd do with a dozen watermelons.

In other Baby Watermelon news: look at the Mexican Sour Gherkin cucumbers that look like super tiny watermelons.

Though you won't hear me shrieking, "Bubba! Come look at my super tiny melons!" because that would be contradictory. And I'm nothing if not consistent in my overly loud backyard proclamations.

Instead I think I'll yell something about pickles. Because my plan is to pickle these little weird things and give them as little weird pickled gifts come the holidays. If we don't eat them all first because WHOA can we eat some pickles.

And that is as far into that rabbit hole as I'm prepared to go.

To change the subject to something less lascivious, I've been updating the Garden Tracker (which also lives on the left side, there) and wouldn't you know that we crossed Zero Barrier (Dorks unite. Thank you.) a while back and we're well into Not a $64 Tomato territory.

In fact, we're into the black to the tune of $100+ dollars, so that's good news given we have an untold number of watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and tomatillos yet to ripen and tip the scales ever farther into Cents Per Pound territory.

Last year I closed out the season with my investment of $91.34 reaping me hundreds of pounds of produce (literally, 273.98 lbs) for a value of $.33/lb.

This year, because I'm a psycho that way, I want to beat that. I want to come in with a value of $.32/lb or less. Perhaps I'm just missing having a running goal to bang on about, but I nearly called it a Sub-30 goal.

Wow. I've said too much.