Loquats

Today we finally harvested a loquat tree, and the timing was perfect. The fruit is ripe and juicy and sweet. It was our third house, after three oranges that only gave us 460 lbs (after about 700 lbs last year) and a small grapefruit tree.

Loquats grow tall, and the fruit has to be cut off with clippers.

Then we sorted the fruit that was still attached to a stem, for distribution, and the fruit that had torn, which was for us.

I got a box of these, which I’ll preserve as jam this afternoon.

The last house had a very beautiful backyard, and the homeowner graciously let us eat our snack on the lawn. Heather made more zucchini bread, and I brought chocolate cookies from Safeway (although I should have remembered the half a strawberry cake I have leftover from Sunday.)

Almost all of the very few words I know in Mandarin are the names of fruit, taught to me by Julia. Today we learned “loquat,” which is pronounced “pee paw,” with the same intonation as “hee-haw.” And we learned “grapefruit,” which Julia says is pronounced “YOdz”,” (like saying “Yo!” with a bit of a sibilant at the end) but the online translators I found have it as “pu tao yo.” I’m going to go with Julia’s pronunciation, since I like yelling “YOdz!”