We finally decided to harvest one of our mighty marrows – the younger one, because my mum was worried that the marrow would be too old, and I was unwilling to snip off the first one because it’s still growing bigger. Remember that I had laid claim to the first while granting her authority over the second.

The great moment – harvesting our first marrow! Gloves were necessary because there were still some bristly hairs on the exterior of the marrow.

Well, at time of harvest, Marrow II was just shy of being a full two feet long, and weighed a hefty 5.5kg or 12 pounds! It’s no wonder the trellis had been leaning more and more – almost to a 60-degree angle when the harvest took place…

When we cut it open, the cross-section looked just like a winter melon. Cooked into a soup, it was just like winter melon in texture, too, with tasteless flesh that simply took on the flavour of the soup.

Cross-section of the marrow – looks very similar to our winter melon, except this had a narrower ring of flesh.

What it had, highly in its favour, was that unmistakeable freshness of home-grown fruits and vegetables. A family friend who dropped by simply could not stop raving about it – even the day after!

Marrow II may not have lived as long as Mighty Marrow, but definitely fulfilled its life purpose – it grew to fruition and was enjoyed by many…

The joke about this photo was that we didn’t realize there was a young lizard on the marrow until after this picture was taken and it jumped onto my arm! It must have panicked when the fruit was taken away from the leafy trellis…

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