Despite a rapidly approaching holiday season with the in-laws coming into town and massive house cleaning underway, I could not back off on my need to forage. Much to Tracy's dismay, I would continue to go out and come back with a pocket full of acorns, walnuts, or persimmons as mentioned in my last post. This time I had taken it a little too far, and did not even get to bring anything home!
A couple of days before Christmas I got antsy to get out of the house. It had been raining all weekend and we had been working on different projects in the house and preparing for the imminent arrival of Tracy's parents. Looking outside and seeing a break in the weather, I used my boys as an excuse "The kids need some fresh air!" and loaded up my baby and toddler sons into the stroller. As the sound of the vacuum sends me, my dog, and both my sons into states of full fledged panic, Tracy thought this would be a great opportunity to clean without all the whining (me) and crying(boys).
Of course, she knew what I was up to when I grabbed a couple of our picking bags and threw them under the stroller, "Just in case," I said.
Each season in our neighborhood seems to highlight different fruits or nuts that are available. In our older, historic district neighborhood, the trees bushes all seem to have a purpose. Being December, I noticed all the houses that have citrus fruits hanging, which should be ripe in January, and noted them for future reference. I scouted around several olive trees and looked at the abundance of fruit that is \wasted into yards, but I already had enough olives curing for the year, and have not finished my olive oil press yet (future post!).
So, the main thing I am looking for on this day is persimmons - I made cookies with the heart shaped persimmons, but I was hoping to find the other kind, the tomato shaped non-astringent variety. I have seen several around but was looking for some that were either on a vacant lot, public land, or on someone's front lawn where I could knock on the door and ask for permission to pick. I am still a little new at this, but knocking on someone's door and asking to pick fruit from their backyard is not something that I am willing to do yet.
So, the boys and I are about five blocks from home, wandering down a promising looking alley when a gust of wind whips up the alley blowing leaves and branches everywhere. Immediately after the gust, it started raining. Not a casual sprinkle as it had been doing earlier that day, but buckets of water dumping from the sky, and I was outside with two young children without any rain gear. I pushed the stroller next to a garage building on the leeward side of the alley way and took my coat off to cover up the baby - he thought this was funny the whole time and played with the zipper on my coat while his dad got soaked. But my two year-old was as exposed as I was and was shortly soaked as well - it did not help that the rain was going sideways and crosswise as the wind kept whipping down this little alley. Throw in some pellet size hail pelting us as we crouched beside this garage and we must have looked quite the sight if anyone could have seen us!
Once the hail turned back into buckets of rain, I decided that we needed to move. I was soaked, my toddler was soaked, and the baby was starting to get wet. We pushed up the creek (yes, creek - the dry alley had turned into a 6" deep creek from the rains) past several houses until we found one with carport opening onto the alley and took shelter inside. I figure I will go back someday soon and thank the owner of the carport as it provided excellent shelter for dumb dads who try to stroller their kids through a rainstorm, and if we are knocking on the door to give thanks for the shelter, we might as well ask if they want all the oranges off of the tree in their backyard.
Now we had shelter, but we were all pretty wet, my two year-old was definitely too cold, and I did not feel toasty warm myself. We waited a few minutes till it looked like the rain was lessening, then we decided we were going to make a break for it to get home - five blocks through the rain pushing a stroller. I figured that if I ran fast enough, everybody would be soaked but we would be home quickly to get dry. We pushed out of the alley/creek at full speed, careening around the 90 degree turn onto the sidewalk, and then came to a stop.
Pulling up in front of us was Mom! Tracy was at the house when the rain and hail starting dumping out of the sky, and realized that I was outside with both kids wearing light fleece coats. She jumped into the car to go find us. We loaded up both the boys and headed for home, already laughing about our adventure.
How did I miss the huge black clouds bearing down on my little family? I had my foraging blinders on, all I could see were oranges, olives, and persimmons, and missed the little things like thunder and clouds that should have warned me in time. But honestly, I cannot say it will be any different next time.
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