Around Home: Fruit

The back garden of the house is not large, but it is spacious enough to provide a bit of fruit occasionally. Among the back-yard products I have been eating recently are naranja agria (sour oranges) and Roatan bananas.

The oranges are gone now; I may have just one or two still in the kitchen fruit basket. The tree has started to bloom again, but a couple of weeks ago when I was still picking the last of the oranges off the the tree, one day I found this.

All of the oranges that had remained on the tree were on the ground and cut open. The oranges were neatly halved, but the jagged cuts made it look as if someone had hacked the fruit open with an

old-fashioned beer-can opener. All of the insides had been scooped out, the the seeds crushed. It made a pretty big mess. After thinking a bit, I concluded that it must have been the parrots that are always lurking in the area. I can't figure out what other animal could have gotten all of the oranges down and consumed them so easily.

I have had lots of platanos, bananas, over the past month or so. Two bunches matured one right after the other, giving me enough to eat and to share with neighbors continuously since before Christmas. A bunch of bananas matures from the top down, allowing you to consume the bananas as they ripen.

When the plant can no longer sustain the weight, or a bunch begins to ripen, I cut the whole bunch off, and hang it from a hook in the wall of the interior patio of the house, which is just off of the kitchen. In this way I have fresh bananas available when needed, and fruit flies or dropped fruit don't dirty the kitchen. Pictured is the last of the second bunch, and from the looks of the plants in the garden, I won't have more for several months. Store-bought bananas are picked too green and just don't taste the same. I'll have to wait awhile for more home-grown bananas.