Trailer Park Girl

Yesterday I was pedaling home from somewhere. When I was within a couple of blocks of home, I happened to look down and see a telltale small, orange-yellow oval shape on the pavement. A hallmark of April in central Texas, those little squashed ovals. About the size of a huge olive or a little lime. I screeched my bike to a halt and looked all around me for the mothership. In a few seconds I found it: A loquat tree, with nearly-ripe-looking fruit hanging over the sidewalk.

“Loquaaaaaaaaaaaats!” I hollered, as I usually do when I spot the tasty, prolific globes. And walked over to sample them. As I’d suspected, they’re not quite ripe, but they’re only about a week away, and I’ve got my eye on that tree. Later, not far away, I found another specimen, whose fruits were a bit farther along. (Microclimate variations are a boon in terms of staggering ripening times, which allows us grazers an extended period to enjoy a given fruit.)

Then this morning on the way to the coffee shop RIGHT IN FRONT OF WHERE I LIVE, I noticed for the first time a loquat tree growing discreetly beyond the field of vision of the typical pedestrian locomoting intently down the sidewalk. And THAT tree was festooned with super-big, super-ripe loquats!

Loquaaaaaaaaaaaats! I brake for them. Look for them in your creator’s garden (I’ve never seen them in your grocer’s freezer).

In Florida, where I spend a lot of time delivering the Avatar Course, loquats ripen around late February through March.

A couple of years ago in another neighborhood here in South Austin, I spotted a huge loquat tree. Since none of the fruit was hanging over the public right-of-way, I went and knocked on the homeowner’s door for permission to pick some. “Sure, take them all!” he said, apparently indifferent to his juicy orange-gold riches.

So which tasty treats are ripe in your area right now? And which ones are going to be ripe before long?

An interesting trend has hit our South Austin neighborhood. Seems that some super-wealthy, eccentric, and very GREEN old geezer has been buying up one big, boxy mega-mansion after another, as fast as they can build ‘em. You know the mansions I’m talking about: the massive, shiny cubes that have been replacing modest old bungalows. They scrape the bungalow off the land as easily and carelessly as if they were flicking a cockroach off a kitchen counter. They scrape the plants and the soil and everything away, leaving bare ground. You can’t even call it “soil” – every microbe that gave it life has been scraped away along with the offending old house. Then, over the course of a few weeks, a huge steel-and-concrete box, which extends right up to the edges of the lot, goes up. The gleaming structure could adorn the cover of Tres Chic Moderne Architecture Journal. And given the target market, the utter lack of space for declasse’ activities such as growing vegetables, sitting outdoors with the family, and so on is not seen as a problem. The ratty old bungalow occupied by some family of modest means has been replaced by a property-tax-revenue-generating palace for one post-industrial mogul and his wife, and maybe an obscenely large dog or two.

Well, enter this eccentric Grandpa Moneybags, who has started buying up these concrete megamansions and then – are you ready for this? – demolishing them. Sometimes he puts up a little cottage in their place, but the past four lots he’s purchased, he’s left the lot free of all manmade structures save for a garden shed. The rest of the lot is occupied by a food garden. As you can imagine, the old Austin neighbors are delighted, while the yuppie arriviste neighbors are up in arms about property values. Well, at least they’re up in arms until the old man visits them with a luscious home-grown tomato or a bunch of tangy arugula. The fresh veggies lure them over to the dark side.

And, in the latest twist, some of the occupants of neighboring mega-mansions have been spotted tearing down parts of their houses to make room for gardens.

Local scroungers have been delighted by the infusion of practically-new building materials that have begun appearing at curbs alongside the trash and recycling.

Naturally the city is worried about how the decline in property values will affect its property-tax revenue. But since the mayor himself has hoisted the banner of making Austin the #1 city in terms of conquering global warming, it doesn’t really look good for city officials to be seen speaking out against making more room for gardens. So lately, they haven’t been speaking out against it. Lately, they just shut up and savor the wagonloads of fresh-grown veggies that somehow find their way to City Hall.

If you’re thinking, “This is major news! Why haven’t I heard about it?” … Well, that’s because I just made it up. Sorry! But anything the human mind can imagine, we can create. So let’s get busy!