Fruit!
I'm not talking about the crop dusted orchards outside of town, or the questionable produce in the market that's been shipped in nitrogen from Chile. I'm talking our own fruit!
When we first looked at the house back in September, it had sat empty for over a year. The front yard was so overgrown and unkept that you couldn't even see the house from the street. The backyard wasn't much better. Shortly after we moved in, we hired a crew to at least clear out the worst of it and it was only then that we discovered we hadn't just bought a house, but we had our own little mini orchard!
We have an orange, a tangerine, an apple, a plum and two fig trees! Plus one mystery tree; it's growing some fruit I've never seen before and no one we've asked has a clue what it is. It may be a kumquat tree, or some alien tree known only to Bako. If you lived here you'd know that isn't such a stretch of the imagination.
Right now the plum tree is so heavy with fruit that the branches are bowed to the ground. We finally went out and picked a bunch and I have to say they are the sweetest and most delicious plums I've ever tasted. Probably because it's about as organic as you can get here. It wasn't so much as fertilized during it's years of neglect. The oranges are wonderful too. The tangerines aren't quite there yet, and we'll have to wait for the fall for the apples.
And then there are the fig trees, one of which is simply massive. We didn't even know what it was until a week ago; we're city boys and not much for figs, so we were completely ignorant. You would have thought I would have a clue - all those years of art history classes and centuries of artists covering up everyone's naughty bits with fig leaves... now it makes sense. The fig leaves are humongous! You could totally hide John Holmes, with room to spare, with these leaves.
So there you have it. We're about as close to a Whole Foods as you'll find for a hundred miles.
