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On Faith, Hope, and Watermelons

On Faith, Hope, and Watermelons

Last updated on: June 25, 2026 at 1:30 am by Mary Pezzulo

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On Faith, Hope, and Watermelons 2026-06-25T01:30:13-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

a round watermelon, sliced open. It looks like the sugar bush baby watermelons I'm trying to grow

image via Pixabay

I think of myself as an accomplished gardener, but I have never yet successfully grown a watermelon.

A freshly picked, vine-ripened, organic watermelon is a treat so sublime I can’t possibly describe it. It’s nothing like the flavorless ovoids you get at the supermarket. Have you ever wondered why cartoon paintings of watermelons are red and green, instead of pink and green? It’s because, when you let a watermelon get totally ripe on the vine, the flesh inside is bright ruby red instead of sickly pink. The supermarket watermelons are pink because they are picked far too early, so they can be transported to stores before they rot. Have you ever wondered why watermelon candy tastes the way that it does? It’s mimicking the taste of a fresh and fully ripe watermelon. A good watermelon is to a watermelon candy, what the magical toffee tree from The Magician’s Nephew is to toffee. It’s candy-sweet but not sickly sweet, refreshing and hydrating but not watery. A proper watermelon is far, far more melon than water.

I first started trying to grow watermelons in 2024. I was told you could put the seeds right into the ground, so I planted them, and they did not sprout. I planted a second batch. These did sprout, in dark green veiny seedlings that looked just the way that they should. But the seedlings began disappearing one by one before they even picked up their true leaves. I think the neighborhood raccoon got them. In 2025, I tried again, but it was no use. The one seedling I planted crept all around the garden in a tangle and produced one fruit, about the size of a turkey’s egg, which didn’t even get ripe before it rotted.

This year, I was even more determined to grow a watermelon.

I bought a packet of fussy organic heirloom seeds, and planted them in good potting mix on the dining room table along with my tomato seedlings. The tomatoes sprouted beautifully. I had more tomato seedlings than I knew what to do with. I gave some away to neighbors, some to the Friendship Room for their community garden, and still had fifteen strong seedlings for the backyard patch. But the watermelon seedlings took their time. Eventually, when I was just about ready to throw away the seed tray, I got one sickly little seedling. The seedling grew until it almost had its true leaves. I put it outside with the tomato trays, to harden off for a few nights before I planted it. When I came out the next morning, the raccoon had gotten that seedling as well.

I threw some other fussy organic watermelon seeds into the empty space near the compost heap to see what would happen.

The compost heap is a wonder. I’ve been putting my yard waste and coffee grounds into it since we moved into this house in 2015, and I’ve been feeding it the guinea pig’s waste since we got a guinea pig in 2021. Every year I compost my sunflower stalks with some of the seeds still clinging to the heads, and every year my compost heap grows new sunflower seedlings for me to transplant. Two years in a row, I’ve gotten a free pumpkin plant from the seeds of old pumpkins in the compost. In March, I composted an old cantaloupe I didn’t want to finish, because I don’t like cantaloupe very much. Cantaloupe is even more boring than a store-bought watermelon. This year, I got excited when the fertile soil near the compost heap started producing lots and lots of deep green, veiny seedlings. I thought that at least some of these would be the watermelons I planted. But as they got their true leaves, I realized that they were all pumpkins, or cantaloupe.

It could be that fresh, vine-ripened, organic cantaloupe is delicious, and I only dislike cantaloupe because I get it from the store. But I didn’t want to try and see if I liked fresh cantaloupe. I wanted a watermelon.

The garden is doing beautifully. The popcorn is growing fine. The bean plants are sprouting. The onions are plumping up. The tomatoes are up to my knees, full of flowers, and one already has a tiny green fruit. The summer squash are holding up and putting out their first blossoms, and the sweet and hot peppers are doing just as well. Those miraculous sunflowers are doing just fine. There are two tiny bunches of grapes on my grape vine, even though grapes usually don’t bear until the second year. The unasked for cantaloupe and pumpkins are luxuriant. The guinea pig gets fresh cilantro and salad greens every morning right out of the patch. But I didn’t have a watermelon.

This afternoon, on the way back from a hiking trip, I stopped to check the clearance shelves of garden stores. I wanted to see if they had any strawberry plants to fill out the empty spaces in my strawberry patch for next year. I did find a rootbound strawberry that was already sending out runners. And next to the strawberry, there were watermelon plants. In fact, there were the very watermelon plants I wanted to try to grow myself: sugar bush baby melons, a deep green fruit about the size of a bowling ball that grows on a nice compact bush like a zucchini instead of a vine that takes up too much space.

Of course, I bought the watermelon. I made a hill of rich compost in the very last empty patch in the garden, and planted the seedling in it. I put several plastic forks facing up in the ground around the seedling like a miniature fence, to deter varmints. And then Adrienne came out to do the watering, and we’ll see what comes of it. As late as I planted the seedling, I might see some fruit at the very end of August if I’m lucky. In the meanwhile, there are all kinds of wonderful things in the garden to look forward to.

I guess this silly story is all about faith, and hope, as gardening usually is.

I guess that if you carefully cultivate your garden in faith, doing all the things you are supposed to do to make it fertile, you don’t know exactly what’s going to come out of it. You can do foolish or lazy things that ruin your garden and you’ll have yourself to blame, but you can also do everything right and not get a good crop. No one but the Father knows the effort you put into what you tried to do. That is why we mustn’t judge each other.

I suppose that if you keep on planting the seeds in hope, year after year, even when things go comically wrong and you make a fool of yourself, you will, eventually, bring in your harvest. You might not get the exact harvest you thought you would, but you’ll get something good. Sometimes your tomato crop will be especially good. Sometimes the grapes will do well. Sometimes you’ll get a great big crop of surprise pumpkins or a new kind of melon you didn’t expect. Sometimes there’ll be a whole lawn of sunflowers you didn’t plant. No matter how hard you try, your life will not look the way you expected, but the Lord will still fill you with good things.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about today.

And tomorrow, I’m going to find a farmer’s market and see if anybody else had good luck with their watermelons.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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