WATERMELLON!

                                              Photo by Art Rachen on Unsplash.                                                                             

Don’t you just love it!  A picnic isn’t a picnic without a juicy watermelon!  Did you ever wonder how the water inside our fruits and vegetables can be consumable regardless of where they are grown?  We eat our fruits and vegetables without thinking about it.  But it is truly a miracle!!  It is another of God’s wonders from ‘The Book of Nature!’  ‘Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them!’  Psalm 111:2. 

Ponder this!  ‘Watermelons (and other fruits and vegetables) can take contaminated water that we can’t drink and bio-filter it naturally through their root system!  A 40-pound watermelon can contain four-and-a-half gallons of juice!’.                                                                                                                           

‘That’s tremendous’ says Nat Bradford, CBS News, ‘The Return of an Heirloom Watermelon’.
For Nat Bradford, growing watermelons is about literally growing water — a life-giving miracle — which is why he helped to found a charity in parched East Africa called Watermelons for Water.  Watermelons are 92 percent water.

Early explorers used watermelons as canteens!  Florida Dept of Agriculture.

Have you ever seen a square watermelon?  See photo on the right.  Want one?  They sell for only $800.00 in the U.S.!

They are strictly a novelty item in Japan.  They are purchased as gifts, status symbols and eye-catching trinkets.  AND, believe it or not, they are inedible!

They are grown in the city of Zentsuji in Japan.  An ideal location for watermelons which grow and thrive in their hot, relatively dry summers.  They wanted to make a watermelon that was all their own.  Well, they certainly succeeded!   

CC Flicker Photo by Solution 63
And what part of a watermelon is the most popular?
THE SEEDS!  They are used in seed spitting contests all across the country!  Jason Schaynot of Georgetown, Texas holds the world record!  In 1995, he spit a watermelon seed 78 feet 6 inches!!!!   

JUST FOR YOU! 

The Florida Department of Agriculture offers the following tips on shopping for, preparing and storing watermelon: 

• Ripe watermelons have a yellow or cream-yellow ground spot in the place the melon rested on the soil.  If this spot is green or white, the watermelon is probably not ripe.
• Whole melons will keep in the refrigerator for no longer than a week. Once cut, they should be kept refrigerated and covered with plastic wrap.
• Before cutting your watermelon, be sure to wipe it with a clean cloth and lightly soapy water.

Here are some additional tips on the safest way to cut a watermelon from Ly Nguyen of Quora:

This method allows you to stabilize the melon on a flat surface after that first step, so as long as your hand or the knife doesn’t slip, it should be a pretty safe process.

           1)  Cut off the top and the bottom of the watermelon. 
           2)  Lay it on a flat end and cut it in half. 
           3)  Lay it on the flat end of the semicircle it makes and–here’s the trick–cut the                        watermelon into slices along the dark stripes on the outside of the watermelon so that the seeds will be on the outside of the slice rather than the inside, where they’re harder to remove. 

ENJOY another of Gods wonders!!!