Fruit Poops

My mom and dad must have been frustrated farmers, because when they bought their first home in Tinley Park, they filled the back yard with apple trees. I remember every fall, the house was filled with the smells of my mom making apple sauce, apple pie, apple jelly, apple butter, apple slices (sort of apple pie, but squares with a heavy coating of frosting on top) and around Halloween, caramel covered apples. It was usually our job as kids, to harvest the hundreds of apples off the trees before they started rotting and falling to the ground. Of course if they did fall to the ground, and were rotten enough, they became kid weapons. I think we enjoyed throwing those things at each other as much as we loved those apple slices my mom made.

Fall is here again, and all the fruit trees here in my neighborhood are starting to ripen. It's not at all like back home in Illinois. Here in Florida we have avocado trees, banana trees, mango trees, and the ever present citrus trees, all of which attract rats. This is the time of year when the mango trees start dropping over ripe fruit like so many piles of poop, and the avocados are just the right density for a hurricane to come along and blast them through windows. Fruit takes on entirely new characteristics when launched by hundred mile per hour winds.

So far two of my neighbors have presented me with some of their harvest. I've received a large bunch of bananas, that I've turned into banana waffles, and banana smoothies, and then there is Paul who gave me the first star fruit off his tree. Ahhh, yes autumn is here. Can the pitter patter of little rat feet in the attic be far behind?