A Sign of the Times

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved watermelon. So did my grandmother, “Budgie”, -- she was just nuts about it -- and no doubt I picked up on her love for it at a very early age. She and I could polish off a huge amount of it in a sitting. Eating watermelon with Budgie was almost a holy sacrament between us.


Here’s a photo of us sharing one back in ’92 or ’93. We were very happy.

So, all summer long I really enjoy the bounty of my most favorite fruit. My favorite way to eat it is to make a watermelon sorbet. It’s really easy now that God finally decided to invent seedless watermelons (something He should have done long ago in my opinion.)

To make watermelon sorbet: Cut a seedless watermelon into 1-inch chunks and freeze them. Blitz them in a food processor with lemon juice and sweetener of your choice. I use the artificial stuff. Watch out for ice-cream headaches.

I’ve enjoyed my watermelons all summer long until a couple of weeks ago when my usual grocery store no longer had them. Awwww. So sad. Autumn was, indeed, upon us.

Then, last week, I went to Trader Joe’s and they had a huge box of them right by the entrance. Yay! I had been expecting to go through an eight month watermelon draught and good-old Trader Joe’s came through for me. I didn’t have my grocery cart with me so I had to lug the thing home seven blocks away. It was worth it.

I wanted to go right back with my cart and get a couple more of them, but I didn’t. However, on Sunday I did take my watermelon-cart with me to church so that I could hit Trader Joe’s right after. I was hoping I didn’t wait too long and they’d still have them.

After church, I went whizzing around to TJs with my cart bouncing behind me, anxious to snatch up a couple of watermelons. The automatic doors swung open and there was the big box on display. Yay!

However, it didn’t contain watermelons.

It was filled with pumpkins.