Harvey and I often eat our lunch on the small veranda overlooking the curve in the Tamar (and why wouldn’t you if you had that view?), also giving us a great view of what is going on in our neighbour’s back yard.
Today he was picking locuts, a fruit I had never heard about until my step-father, Jim, visited last week. Jim was very excited when he saw the ripe locuts next door and mentioned how nice locut jam was – every day he was here. So we were amused to see our neighbour picking the ripe locuts today, but even more amused when he offered some to us. I accepted, as I always like trying new things, but Harvey wasn’t keen as he’d tried the fruit before and didn’t like the texture.
We started sharing fruit stories and I told him about how our mulberry tree was so full the fruit was dropping to the ground because we couldn’t keep up. I offered him the chance to pick some of our mulberries – and he was over with a ladder in a flash! He also has a mulberry tree, but it’s young and only has a few berries. So while I went back to work after lunch, Harvey, our neighbour, Noah and Ethan picked about 2kg of mulberries and split their haul between the households.
My crumble – before and after
With ours I made a mulberry and apple crumble, with three apples from the orchard 1.5km away, and a pot of jam. The crumble was delicious and I think the jam will go very nicely with the hot cross buns Harvey bought earlier (don’t get me started on why stores have Easter products in January!).
