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!

Cornucopian

The first time I noticed it, I almost went weak-kneed.  It was so sweet, so perfect, so rich.  A single cane from the raspberries has created an archway over the gate.  That cane is loaded with berries in all stages of ripening.  They hang like finely detailed lanterns overhead as I enter the raspberry patch.

Could be painted on the edge of a tea cup!

The top two feet of the raspberry stalk is the most tender and least able to support itself. Add to that the fact that with the help of water and aspects related to chickens, the canes have grown to eight feet talk--most of them. Some are closer to ten.

Autumn Gold's need another week to get their glow.

So they arch over in a most inviting and cornucopian style.  Applying restraint to allow the berries to ripen--Things I get to do today.  Eat them whether they are ripe enough or not--Things I get to do today!

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.