Thankful for You

Perfect for eating or for feasting the eye on a Thanksgiving Table.

It all came together perfectly, the definition of Synchronicity.  A perfect growing season for Persimmons, enough time and focus to prepare token gifts, an exquisite ball of yarn in all the right colors bought years ago with no possible project in mind, leftover paper lunch sacks from my husband's working days all came together to provide a tangible comment of appreciation to the neighbors who live on our dead end street.

Plus a note inside on what to do with Persimmons!
Not many people know.

I'm thankful for them. And I'm thankful for YOU.

Fall Fruit Salad

Glorious leaf colors come together though the fruits cannot.

Nature makes delicious combinations.  When fall leaves turn spectacular, their coming together is a juicy delight. I found the Persimmon, the Ginkgo and the Blueberries mixing it up during the Things I get to do today for fall clean up.  Best "fruit salad" I've seen in a long time.

My Speck of Sunshine

Ginkgo Biloba  shining all over my yard!

Today is Fall Grey.
























Some days are deeply impenetrable in that dense, dark color.  Regardless, one can always find spots of brilliance and light, little reminders of the giant sun.  My Ginkgo tree flashes pure, clean yellow all up and down our street, the only radiant tree on the curb.

Fuyu Persimmons--ripe enough to eat.

My favorite of Things I get to do today is taste test a golden, sunny orb from the Persimmon tree.  Grey has no grip on my soul--not today!

Waste Not, Want Not

The adage smacks of frugality.  Pinch it in often enough, and there'll always be enough to pinch. Of all the Things I get to do today, I'm taking a long moment to see another aspect.

Here's my go at it.  If I use what I have, honor where it came from, am respectful of its presence, then it can be abundant in my world.  It is safe for it to show up in my space.

Not fit to eat like this

That's how I've come to save the last of the persimmons.  These late-to-ripen orbs were barely golden when we snipped them from the tree just after Thanksgiving.  The brilliant orange ones were gifts to my mother.  A whole wheel barrow load were sorted out, given away, eaten, eaten, eaten.  By Christmas all the really good ones were gone.  Those that had not ripened enough on the tree were pale and softening.  They make good pickens for the chickens, but lover of persimmons that I am, I do not eat them in this state.

Four shelves full for the food dryer

From a true desire to honor the life in this fruit sprang the idea to try drying them rather than pitching the remaining box of soggy globs into the compost.

Good for all winter!

It was magic.  Bland mush became sweet-like-a-date chips to snack on during the winter--a delicious gift.  I am abundantly fed.

Persimmon Panic

The persimmons are falling!  It's not like having the sky come down, but I was totally disheartened. The total crop of my favorite fruit was under 40 last year, and that was before the squirrels nipped them off, chewed a little hole in the skin and hid them all over the yard.  The actual net was closer to 10--from a tree that typically yields 300 or more each year.

Twisted, pixy magic of the persimmon calyx from the tree
that wisely thins itself

There were tiny wax-yellow blossoms all over the tree a couple of months ago.  Hope surged high that things were back on track. What I had forgotten was that the tree does an automatic thinning just before the fruits begin to grow.  All over the ground were dozens and dozens of spent calixes from the tree.  My panicked vision made it hard to see what was left to mature on this grand tree.

Baby persimmon about 5/8" across

Collecting my wits along with the Things I get to do today revealed that there is, indeed, a good crop of green, baby persimmons that will grow into brilliant orange pumpkin-shaped fruits for Thanksgiving and Christmas.