Food, glorious food, persimmons, mangoes & ginger.

When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering ofpraise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God. - Leviticus 19:23-25

Fruit is the glory of the plant kingdom. In bud the trees are a nimbus of delicate blossom. In fruit they feed the hungry with sweetness. The best of them gracefully shed their foliage in Autumn & winter naked reveal a dazzling beauty in simplicity of line. The Persimmon meets all these requirements except edibility. I have only met one other fruit I dislike more. Pawpaws are just gross. Persimmons will grow here in the Mountain hinterlands though I am still trying to work out why anyone would want to. Granted the tress are strikingly beautiful but the fruit is a squishy disaster. Eeew!

So here are some more of the summer fruits we enjoy ~ or not in my case.

Pawpaws will, unfortunately, grow at the drop of a seed. Everyone grows pawpaws. They don't take up much room being a smallish tree that grows palmlike & bunches its fruit along the stem. This is the fruit most likely to be given away. Everyone might grow them but very few people actually like them. I can't get past the smell, which always reminds me of the local tip on a particularly fetid day.

Custard apples also fall into the *eeew* basket. The tress are gorgeous being low & spreading but the fruit is peculiar. The outer skin is rough & coarse like an alligator skin. Cut open the white flesh flakes like certain types of fish. I can't get past that & the big black seeds in the centre.

Mango trees are fantastic. The flush of new leaf growth each year is a deep & vibrant red. A mature tree is a deep pool of cool shadow on a hot summer's day where the mosquitoes like to congregate in dense black clouds. The pendulous fruit glints under the leaves like golden suns. They have a huge seed in the centre & children will happily suck the discarded stones rejected by adults. The fruit is a rich orange colour. They are the smell of a Queensland summer.

Ginger I do like. The smell where it's grown...mmmmm! We pass paddock after paddock of the plants each time we travel to my mother's. There is a large ginger factory nearby & a visit is always worthwhile. I forget how many varieties of ginger can be grown; I have several myself in the garden, but the sweet Sharp taste, the rich heady scent, is delicious. The plants also grow a variety of exotic flowers. I like my ginger pickled & topping grainy toast spread with cream cheese.
The other thing we see plenty of when we travel north is the cane fields. Cane provides the bulk of our sugar plus molasses & syrup. I remember watching the cane cutters harvest, circling inwards round a paddock so that everything that had been sheltering in the fields was huddled at the centre until finally flushed out there would be a swarm of snakes, mice, rats & other small wildlife. At the finish the cane fields would be burnt & the air would smell of the burnt toffee smell of burning cane. The sky glowed like a burning coal, heavy with smoke. The fires would last for days, blackening the sky.
Lychees are something else that grows well here. Each year we used to help harvest the lychees on the farm down the road & always had lychees for Christmas. The outer husk is thin & dry & quite brittle. The white inner flesh is grape like with a huge centre seed. They are a bit too sweet for my taste but I will eat them.

I have saved the best for last; avocados! The little *alligator pears* have a delicate nutty flavour & a smooth, rich texture. The seeds aren't as big & difficult either. There are lots of good ways to eat these: as guacamole dip; with vinegar & cracked black pepper; with sour cream & brown sugar; spread on grainy toast & lightly seasoned with tomato sauce. The really brave spread their toast with Vegemite & top it with avocado. When we first moved to the island there were so many different varieties to choose from, all free on the abandoned farms, that we actually got a little tired of avocados.

Being sub~tropical we get a glut of fruit pretty much all year round but unfortunately I've never really developed a taste for the tropical fruits so readily available all around us. What I like are cold climate fruits: raspberries [my favourites], nectarines & peaches, kiwi fruit & a close second, dark cherries like drops of blood.