Green Anoles and Green Persimmons!

I was reading the other day how it is getting hard to find Green Anoles in Florida due to the invasion of Brown Anoles . The Brown Anole is a similar species not to be confused with the brown stage of the Green Anole..boy is that ever confusing! It seems that the Brown is much more competitive and prolific than the Green thus causing territorial feuds. The Green Anole is becoming scarce and some residents in Florida are a bit worried. I am not sure they are scarce..I think maybe they have all moved to my yard. For some reason, I have more lizards than I can shake a stick at on any given day. They seem to be everywhere! The Green Anole is what we grew up knowing as an ordinary green lizard..no fancy name..just lizard. They were great playthings for my brothers, bringing peals of laughter as they would chase my sister through the yard with the lizard in tow. She was and still is..uh..mildly afraid of them or at least has a very strong dislike of these fine creatures. Fair warning, Dear Sister, my yard is a crawling mass of lizards! This summer there seem to be so many tiny lizards with more hatching constantly. I like to think it is simply because they prefer to live in my gardens but I am sure it is more likely that with the gardens there are bugs. Since I do not use any chemical pesticides, I depend on the natural order of things to eliminate unwanted critters. So far, this seems to be working out pretty well. The lizards, birds, garden spiders and dragonflies are eating multitudes of bugs that flock to my plants so I am able to maintain a balance by only using natural herbs for insecticides when needed. As it is, the Green Anoles can have free roam of all the gardens with fear of harm from me.

Outside of the garden and down on the Bayou edge, there is a wild Persimmon tree. Yesterday, I noticed the little green orbs are starting to turn slightly yellow. In a couple of months, they should be dark orange and ripe enough to pick. There is a sort of folk rule that you should not eat these small persimmons before the first frost of the year and this far south that is probably not just a myth. It has nothing to do with the frost making them edible, it just ripens them a bit more. Ripe persimmons are really a delight. I am not overly fond of the large cultivated persimmons but these tiny (two inches in diameter) persimmons are delectable! When ripe and rather squishy, they are unbelievably sweet. Yes, there are several quite large seeds in each one that you need to spit out, but there is just something satisfying about being able to eat these bite sized fruit. It might just be the idea that I have gotten my fair share before the birds and 'possums devoured the entire tree's crop! You can bet I will be watching for these little golden globs of goodness to shrivel a bit to indicate they are ripe. Yum! One word of caution though..if you have never eaten a wild persimmon (or any persimmon for that matter) make sure it is squishy ripe. Biting into a

green (unripe) one is an experience you will never forget! The astringent properties of it will

turn your mouth "inside out"!!! The pucker power of a green persimmon beats anything I have ever known! These pictures are actually from last year. We had so much rain today that it was hard to venture all the way to the Bayou's edge to get a shot of the persimmon tree. Here though, you can see what I mean about the fruit being a bit squishy. The darker orange ones are actually rather soft and are ready to eat! The ones on the tree now are still much greener than these so I will have to wait a bit.