Persimmon Delight

   I know that not a lot of folks are fond of the wild persimmons but, personally, I find them delightful.  It is my findings that the cultivated type are sometimes a bit, errr, slimy.  Don't get me wrong.  I eat them!  I like them but it is my choice to have the little wild type.  The suit my tastes just fine!  I grew up eating the huge, delightfully sweet Japanese Persimmons.  Pop had five trees growing just outside the back door of the old farm house.  As kids, we would climb up in those trees and find the persimmon of perfect ripeness.  We, also, conned many of our unsuspecting friends into sampling one of the green, unripe persimmons and would giggle at their skewed up faces!  

   Imagine my delight when I found six more persimmon trees that are large enough to bear fruit.  I have been planting dozens of seeds about the hillside and, today during a hike, I noticed that six more of the young trees are loaded with little persimmons.  Hopefully, I will be able to pick enough of the little fruits to make more jam this year.  The possums and coons eat more than their share of my persimmons!  I have been hoarding the last jar of jam made from persimmons that I picked two years ago.  Those persimmons were from my aunt and uncle's place and were so sweet that I hardly had to add any sugar to the jam.  (I will make a trek over to their old place and see if the tree is still bearing fruit.  Maybe I will be able to add those to the jam-making!)

  I must remember to cut open a few seeds to check our weather forecast for this winter.  Remember? The inside of the seed supposedly can tell the severity of a winter's weather.  Last October, I cut open seven seeds and the majority of them had "spoon" shapes inside.  That called for a snowy winter.  Well, I suppose we had as close to snow as we can get down this far south with our two ice storms.  I called the prediction pretty accurate.  When slicing the seeds this year, I will take note of the shapes I find and then compare with our weather.  This should be quite interesting!  At least now I have lots of trees to give me a forecast...and some yummy fruit!  Come first frost, you will find me raiding the wild persimmon trees!