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Fruit Trees

If you are trying to create a garden of Eden or a Robinson Crusoe type dream world, you must have fruit trees. The common apples, plums, and cherries prefer a dormant winter which we don't have on the Texas Riviera. So we must grow fruit trees that tolerate heat, tropical sunshine, and lack of dormancy. Since my ancestors are from the tropics, I really prefer tropical fruit.

Citrus

Thad planted a grove of tangerines, grapefruit, navel oranges, marrs oranges, and valencias on one of the last, large, vacant sites south of the house. He also scattered a few other citrus around the yard such as blood oranges, kumquats, lemons, and limes. The ponderosa lemon is huge, larger than our grapefruit. Each being large enough for a pie or a pitcher of lemonade. Blood oranges have red stains throughout the meat of the fruit. The fruit tastes like a typical orange but with raspberry overtones. Kumquats are a surprise to the novitiate since the peel is the sweetest part

 

 

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Papaya Trunk

Avocados were then planted followed by papayas, and feijoas. Some of the avocado trees are huge becoming part of the canopy. The papayas sprout from the seeds which are devoured by the many birds which get to the fruit before they are fed to us. Papayas are a musky fruit and many people do not like the taste. Thad adds lime juice and a bit of sugar, and he agrees that they are delicious. The feijoas are sometimes called pineapple guava. The flower petals are delectable in salads, the fruit have a taste that actually is similar to a pineapple.

 

 

Golden Nugget Mango (Thad makes World Class mango juice

Next came the Mexican guavas, mango (which are the best and I think they were named after me), sapote blanco, and atemoya. The Mexican guava has a nasty smell when ripe and is best planted far from the patio areas. The fruit is good, however it has many seeds which can be objectionable to humans. We macaws relish the seeds along with the tasty fruit.

 

The sapote blanco looks like a small apple but tastes more like a cross between a banana and a peach. It has white inside fruit and is picked green, and then left to ripen. The atemoya is a great desert fruit with a overwhelming sweetness and the two trees have produced for years. Eating one is exhaustive and definitely an elbow dripper even for us parrots. Civilization for humans calls for eating it with a spoon.

Other fruits are the Surinam and Barbados cherry, the java plum, the sugar apple, and the strawberry guava. Although each name indicates the common northern fruits (cherry, plum, apple, and strawberry), these fruits are not even remotely related and have a completely different taste. Each is unique and possesses individual characteristics with various colors, sizes, and time of harvest.

One of the few trees in Mango's Jungle that looses its leaves in the winter is the persimmon. Two of the varieties are oriental and appear to shut down for the winter with the shortening days of fall. A native persimmon is the chapote which carries a common telltale sign by darkening the lips (or beak) of the unsuspecting fruit thief. The plant is semi-deciduous and looses its leaves just prior to new leaf growth. Another deciduous bush is the pomegranate which actually has leaves of gold in the fall; something rarely seen in this part of the world.

Watering Bananas

A few banana trees supply all of us with fruit but Thad hasn't been taking good care of these plants and they have not been irrigated with the amount of water that they prefer. The fruit is rather sparse. Thad cooks these bananas on the grill adding lime juice, brown sugar, and ground cloves.

Another tasty fruit which blooms in the winter is the loquat. The flowers appear in clusters and have a smell of almonds. The fruit is often described as tasting like a cross between a cherry and a plum. Thad and I don't agree with this theory. We feel that it is unique and doesn't taste like anything described.

In Mango's Jungle, there are also a few young fruit trees of which have never born fruit. We are anxiously waiting for our first tastes. These are the carambula, the kaffir plum, the mammey, and the leeche. We have eaten these fruits either purchased in the grocery store or Thad and Alice have tasted them on their trips into Mexico. We thoroughly enjoy our "fruit of the gods".

The chachalacas get more than they should but they let us sample any of the fruit which they did not eat. The fruit is healthy and we expect to live long lives by eating these delicacies which change from season to season. We never tire from our daily fruit picking escapades. Tangerine and I really prefer these fruits to fall on the ground before they are eaten. We love the ripe fruit. Thad is always eating these things when they are still green. He's just not real bright.

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