I’ve got a lov-e-ly bunch of ol-ives here!

Reader Susan was thinking that all we grew here were those sour little oranges that we turn into marmalade in December. The 100 persimmon trees blog was news to her. Well now, we have more! How about a pomegranate tree? It grows unattended in a creek bed and every year it produces a few fruits, actually very few fruits. Like you could count them on one hand—even if that hand had a traumatic encounter with a table saw and lost some digits. So the pomegranate tree doesn’t count.

Olives, well that’s another story. This year’s crop is a bonanza! They’re growing in bunches, almost like grapes! I’ll be processing them in large buckets in a few weeks.

Speaking of grapes, we have some domesticated grapes that the birds, wasps, and squirrels find irresistible. This year I got exactly one bunch of grapes that escaped their notice by being hidden behind a shroud of leaves. Wild grapes, however, are all over the place. They’re pea-size tiny, and even when they’re fully dark purple they elicit tight sphincter response in the mouth (sour), so like the pomegranate they really don’t count either.

Besides the four olive trees, our other cultivated trees include two loquat, six pistachio, and one each plum, apricot, peach and lemon. I have a nice bunch of chives, some oregano, ginger, rosemary, and sage. The cactus fruit makes fine jelly.

Then of course there was the potato.