A watermelon decided to show up in my desolate flower bed. I say “show up”, because none of us planted it there: it sprung from some passing bird dropping. I say “desolate” because the flower bed is in reality nothing more than red mulch over hardened earth. There are no flowers. Not this year, save the fake ones in a pot nearby. This melon decided to show up right near my front steps where I could watch it daily… watch it in the dry, barren heat of Mississippi’s hellfire August, with no rain for weeks and temperatures wavering near 100 degrees each day. Watch this melon. First the two leaves standing upright, shouting in their little sing-song voices, “Whooo hooo! Over here! Look what we are doing!” I watched them, at first assessing that they were watermelon…wondering how they got there, and then waiting for them to shrivel up and die in the heat. I gave them no water. I was not merciful. I was not kind. I wanted to see them wither and die under the oppressive sun, their fragile, water-laden vines and leaves unable to take the glare and brutality of this particularly wretched August. Yet, the melon just kept sending out more leaves. Big and lush and deep green.
I watched them and waited for the deer to come and devour them. Eat them in one fell, overnight snack fest, like they had done to so many of my other flowers. I’d come out one morning and where there had been lush abundance the night before there would be only forlorn emptiness. The deer never came. The leaves multiplied and grew. Despite no rain. Despite cruel heat. I gave them no water. I wanted to watch them give up and die. Wanted to come home one hot afternoon and find their fragile vibrance turned pale and flat and mournful against the sharp red mulch. Instead, they spread and delicate yellow blooms appeared. Bees trounced in with drones of glee and drank their sweet nectar and pollinated them.
Still, I watched them… the yard men would obliterate the leaves, I thought. They’d die under the random assassination of thoughtlessness. Weed-whacked into a million flecks of green. Wasted. Pointless. I did not ask the lawn men to spare them. I wanted to see the cruel injustice of the world to an innocent plant. A world that didn’t care what lived or died. Everyone would deem that melon nothing but a weed… serving no purpose and best ripped out as if it had never been. Yet, the yard men worked around the melon and left every leaf and blossom in tact. I studied the melon leaves as they sang merrily tiny songs in my ears as I passed back and forth under the sweltering sun.
I left and went out of town, down to Tampa to work for a week, and though I asked my son to water other plants, I did not ask him to water the melon. I was certain I would come home to find the plant dead. Succumbed at last to the bugs or blight or the mind-melting heat. Instead, it had rained and rained and a false fall appeared with cooler temperatures. I came home to find the leaves still singing, holding up their skirts to show me what they had done: produced a baby watermelon.
I stared at the small, perfectly round green-on-green striped small melon. “What have you done?” I whispered to the leaves. “How have you thrived and flourished under such neglect and in such unfavorable conditions?” I went over and knelt in the harsh mulch and spoke softly to the leaves and stroked them, noting the multitude of blossoms, the delicate tendrils of the vines reaching daintily out across the mulch for paths to spread and send out even more leaves. Delicately, I touched the firm, young skin of the baby melon and cooed at it. It was cool to the touch. Unblemished. Perfect. A tear slowly traced its way down my cheek as I marveled at this melon plant and her little reproduction of joy.
We have been taught, in our version of animist witchcraft, that flora, fauna, and lapis come to you in seasons to be teachers and guides along the path of life. This merry melon has been one such teacher for me. For me, who struggles to find my authentic self under the layers and masks and protective shells I have encased her in. For me, who longs to sing and dance merrily and yet is terrified of being obliterated by a world that does not care if I exist or not. For me, whose strength is both tender and fragile, whose fecund body produced many children, yet it is now my fertile mind that bursts and flowers with thoughts and ideas worth spreading. This melon simply is. It cascades and overflows and now in mighty, riotous chorus shouts joyously at me to simply be what you were made to be: leaf by leaf, tendril and vine, blossom and fruit. Be who you truly are, despite all the reasons not to. All the reasons perhaps to shrivel up and die. Pay no heed to any of those… just be.
Erica Sittler is a Witch practicing her craft in Mississippi where she is a local, active member of the Temple of Witchcraft. Her magick is in the mundane and in bringing honor and attention to those small things that build a sustainable and adventurous life. She is a Temple Mystery School student under the instruction of High Priestess Sellena Dear.
