Inside the Garden Gate

Some little treasures are emerging inside the garden this week.
first, after weeks of blossom drop I finally have a bell pepper
and, be still oh my heart, it is a little tiny artihhoke !!!! Hurray !!!
And in the category of Biggest Tomato, I have isolated 2 Big Zac plants this year. I had it down to two fruit per plant, and last night I made the final cuts. We have two Big Zacs throwing ALL their plant energy into beating last year's 1lb 10 oz entry ... stay tuned.
And last but not least, here is a little treasure of a melon. It is a French melon ... a Cavaillon melon. I have tried growing them from the seed packets sold here in the States, but they never lived up to what I had in France. And even in France, they would vary in flavor. Until one day, at the Aligre Market in Paris I came upon a tranche de miel. One slice and I knew I had hit the motherlode of flavor. The kind of flavor that would send my eyes rolling back in my head muttering le petit Jesus en culotte de velour.[loosely translated it means "it tastes like the baby Jesus in a pair of velvet trousers"]

So I pocketed some of the seeds from that Aligre Market tranche de miel and brought them home 2 summers ago. When I stumbled over them in my seed box, I had little hope that they would even germinate this spring, but they DID and now I am watching with delight as they ripen here in my garden.