Mrs. Tang and the Mystery Seed- Read and Print

By Rachel Dunstan Muller, copyright 2021

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Mrs. Tang had the most wonderful garden. People would come from miles around to see her sunflowers standing tall and proud, to smell her roses, to taste her carrots and her melons and her fresh corn. And Mrs. Tang – well understandably she was quite proud of her garden.

Now, Mrs. Tang loved all the seasons – summer, autumn, winter – but her favourite season was spring because that’s when Mr. McKay – the mailman – brought the seeds that Mrs. Tang had ordered from the seed catalogue. Oh, how she loved opening that package – filled with seeds of all shapes and sizes, seeds for all kinds of flowers and vegetables. But one year, Mr. McKay delivered not one, but two packages. The first one contained all the seeds that Mrs. Tang had ordered – all the seeds she was expecting for her geraniums, and her turnips, and her cherry tomatoes. But the second package? The second package contained just one seed. One great, big, shiny black seed – round on one end and pointy on the other, about the size of a very large dinner plate. But there was no label on the second package, so there was no way to know what kind of seed it was.

“You’re not going to plant that seed, are you?” said Mr. McKay. “There’s no telling what would grow from something like that!”

Mrs. Tang held the giant seed with both her hands – and grinned. “Of course I’m going to plant it,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what it grows!”

That very afternoon, Mrs. Tang got out her favourite shovel and dug a hole in the ground – a great big hole at the very edge of her garden. She put the mystery seed in the hole, covered it with dirt, and gave it a good sprinkling of water.

Then she turned her attention to her other seeds – while she waited for the mystery seed to sprout.

Mrs. Tang didn’t have to wait long. Only a few days later, she saw a tiny bit of green poking from the ground. At least it was tiny at first – but it didn’t stay tiny. By the next day, that sprout was already as thick as Mrs. Tang’s leg – with two giant leaves unfurling on both sides. The next day the sprout was even bigger, and there was a third leaf poking up from the top – and that third leaf was huge. I mean it was ginormous! Mrs. Tang could have wrapped herself in that leaf – and had some left over.

Every day the plant got bigger, a huge vine with more and more giant leaves. It got so big, that it took over Mrs. Tang’s entire garden. Those poor sunflowers – they couldn’t stand tall and proud anymore – they had to lean this way and that, squeezing out into the sun wherever they could.

Well, as you can imagine, word got out, and people started coming from all over to see the enormous plant. In fact, people were so excited by the giant mystery vine, that some of them set up tents in the field behind Mrs. Tang’s garden.

“What’s it gonna be, Mrs. Tang?” the children asked. “A pumpkin? A zucchini?”

“Guess we’ll have to wait and see,” said Mrs. Tang.

When the first yellow flowers appeared – giant yellow flowers – bigger than the biggest umbrella – people actually cheered. You know who else was happy to see those flowers? The bees!

Well, the sun kept shining, the bees kept buzzing, and every now and then a good rain shower fell from the clouds.

Until one day Mrs. Tang spotted something at the base of one of those giant yellow flowers. It was about the size of a stretched-out basketball, and it was striped all around – pale green stripes and dark green stripes. Mrs. Tang took one look at those stripes and she knew exactly what it was – a watermelon.

Now of course, that watermelon didn’t stay the size of a stretched-out basketball. No, of course not! Every day, it grew. It grew, and it grew, and it GREW – until it was bigger than Mrs. Tang’s house! 

Finally, the day arrived that everyone had been waiting for – it was time to harvest the giant watermelon!

The mayor of Mrs. Tang’s town made a speech – and then Mrs. Tang herself sawed the first hole in the side of that enormous melon. You see that giant watermelon was MUCH too big to cut into pieces. No, they had to cut a hole in the watermelon – like a doorway – and then dig out the delicious juicy goodness from the inside out.

It took them weeks to dig out that watermelon. People came from everywhere with their shovels and their buckets and their wheelbarrows. And they feasted – morning and night they feasted! Let me tell you, there were some very happy children in Mrs. Tang’s town that summer.

And when the last bit of juicy pink goodness had been scraped from the inside, Mrs. Tang was left with the hard green shell, a giant, hollow watermelon rind. And do you know what she did? She carved out more holes for windows and a chimney, and then she moved right in.

Well, that’s what I would do, if I had a giant watermelon!    

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