Houses I Have Loved 2a

Today is Friday, March 26, 2008. The sun is shining but it is quite cool. I know 2a seems a little strange in the title but I realized that I had left out some important information about the house in Bakersfield. (and oh, yes, I am using a new Toshisba Lap Top we got this week. And I have to type slower since the keyboard feels so different. Our other computer crashed yesterday - more's the pity.)
Back to Bakersfield - Our yard, besides all of the fun places for the children to play, had wonderful fruit and nut trees. When we bought the place there were two pecan trees - one a papershell pecan, an apricot tree, a fig tree and two small orange trees. Our first year there, the apricots were abundant. We ate all we wanted and canned at least 30 quarts from that one tree. We always had a good crop of apricots. The pecans, how I loved having pecans of my own. This was my first exposure to the paper shell kind. Nuts you could crack in your hands, with big pecan halves, just to eat right then or to use in baking. What a treat that was for this Missouri gal who only knew about the pecans that you dug out of their little round shells!
Figs were not something we really savored until a friend gave me a recipe for honey dried figs. Oh boy! Those we all took to. And we had a big fruit dryer that Glen's dad and mother had created for us from a big old turkey incubator they bought somewhere over in Utah. Dried apricots and honey dried figs from our own trees! What a sweet treat!
We decided to plant some more fruit trees. We added a lemon tree. One of my friends said that was like having a pharmacy in your own yard. After juicing the lemons, the rind is great rubbed on sores or cuts - great healing powers. And lemon juice in a rinse for your hair works wonders. Everyone knows that lemon rubbed on the face is a great facial. And it is supposed to lighten liver spots as well.
We loved the fresh lemonade and the juice for all kinds of cooking. Lemons can be used anytime. When they are just new, the juice is very tart and then as the lemons ripen the juice gets sweeter. The tree produced abundantly. We would pick a sack full, juice them and freeze the juice in ice cube trays to have available whenever we needed them. I woud also freeze the rinds to use however I wanted. It was a great way to freshen up the garbage disposal - drop a half lemon in and grind with the hot water tap running. Such a fresh lemon scent!
We planted a cherry tree. It produced abundantly but the birds got more than we did. Next was an apple tree. Oh, those Gravenstein apples made the best applesauce and apple pie you ever could want. Our little pink grapefruit tree never did produce many grapefruit but it was fun to have it nevertheless. We also planted a mandarin orange. That was a great addition to our little orchard. The tree we wanted to produce the most was our avocado tree. Oh, it was big and beautiful and each year we would hope for a big avocado crop. But it never did produce for us. It made a good shade tree, though. There's nothing so wonderful as stepping into your yard and getting a handful of fresh fruit or some nuts. That's the best of life.
Life changes and you have to move on but you can always savor the memories. That's all for today.