The compost pail in the kitchen is emptied twice a week rain or shine, winter or summer, into one of our two compost bins in the back yard. Into that pail goes onion skins, vegetable trimmings, corn cobs, melon and orange and grapefruit skins, avocado pits,  eggshells, teabags, coffee grounds, used paper napkins and anything else that seems like reasonable organic fodder for the rich compost that results after a year's energy-production as the materials collapse into one another, degrade and become soil-enriching humus through decomposition.

Over the years, that annual spread on our gardens of the resulting compost has led to good returns in our gardens. It has also led, on occasion to the mysterious growth of some types of vegetation that I have been unable to identify. We've had all manner of vines spontaneously erupt in our gardens as a result of that annual spread of compost. The compost is laid on the soil in the gardens in the late fall, and it gradually works its way into the soil to enrich it.

Some springs there are so many seedlings coming up in inconvenient places I simply pluck them like weeds. Other times, out of curiosity, I leave a few and attempt later as they mature, to identify them. We have had some fairly productive tomato vines that have introduced themselves in various parts of the garden, as a result. Last year I became aware, fairly late in the growing season, of odd-appearing vines. I transplanted some to more convenient locations, and plucked the rest. While a few eventually did produce flowers, it was so late seasonally that nothing came of them.

About ten years ago there was a sudden influx early in the spring of vines, vines everywhere in all of the gardens, and I simply removed them. I did leave a few, however, and one seemed to have appeared in a particularly appropriate place, right by a trellis which it began speedily to mount. One day we noticed - without being able to imagine how we'd overlooked its presence for so long - a nicely emerged melon, obviously a Honeydew melon.  We tied the vine securely to the trellis, hoping that would help with the growing weight of the melon.  And in July it was fully mature and ripe for plucking. Which we did, enjoying it tremendously for breakfast one day.

This morning I withdrew from the refrigerator a Honeydew melon that was grown quite far from where we live. It was produce from Honduras. The label on the fruit read "Melons with Purpose". A rather idiosyncratic bit of labelling, whose message seemed fancifully ambiguous. The purpose being to please the palate of the discriminating? The purpose being to feed melon-appreciative consumers? The purpose being to tantalize with the possibility that its seeds might after composting become viable?

Who knows? Thought- and amusement-provoking, in any event.