Al fresco dining

@DeWayfarer In the hay meadow in spring there was a little flower that looked just like a petunia. It had the sweeeeetest nectar.

@Nelladell at my second grade school there was a tree whose bark tasted similar to cinnamon.

Also my father showed me about Saint John's bread. The trees where numerous here a long time ago. They are now long gone replaced with bitter orange tree's so no one can its fruit. 😢

@DeWayfarer why did they plant the bitter kind?

@Nelladell to detour the homeless and indegent from eating the fruit.

Can't encourage such behavior in rich areas. 😒

@DeWayfarer Well. Well then.

Durn it, anhyway.

@Nelladell this is what it was like in the early sixties. You simply can not recognize it today.

All those groves and farms are gone!


"They paved paradise to put up a parking lot!"

@DeWayfarer I guess the late 60s was when I was there last -- and how I remember it. Sigh

@Nelladell that's exactly where I live then! Arrow pointing to home! Gone now!

Sorry about the trees. I loved the smell of orange blossoms there and in Phoenix. I guess, though, that even bitter oranges have sweet smell?

@Nelladell they actually have no smell at all. Gene spliced!

Unshown in that image and to the far left of that image was the walnut Grove.

Today it's where the crystal cathedral sits and its parking lot! 😢

@DeWayfarer I feel your pain

@Nelladell made a nostalgia post because of this conversation a few minutes ago. 🤷‍♂️

@DeWayfarer Good. I hope to find it.

@Nelladell https://similarworlds.com/life/4246280-Waxing-nostalgic-Joni-Mitchell-Big-Yellow-Taxi?sort=1

@DeWayfarer thank you. I was gonna go to your profile and hope to find it that way. Thanks for making it easy.

@DeWayfarer we had black walnut trees by the creek and would gather them in the fall. My aunt would tell us she’d make fudge if we cracked the walnuts and dug the nuts out of the shells. It was hard and time-consuming to do but the flavor of black walnuts is excellent.

@cherokeepatti Thanks for that. I think it's better than excellent, especially in fudge. Every Christmas we had two kinds of candy; fudge with meats from the black walnuts that grew in the bottom 40 and divinity from the wild pecans that grew in the upland timber.

@Nelladell We have wild pecans here in Oklahoma, have to know where they are growing. I picked up a lot one year in the mid-70’s, it was enough to bake with for several years, kept them frozen until I needed them, the flavor is much richer than paper shell pecans. I used to see jars of shelled black walnuts for sale in the small general store in my grandpa’s village. Someone had extra and spent time shelling them and digging out the nuts, a lot of work to get those.

@cherokeepatti As I recall, selling black walnuts was a lot of work for very little money in our corner of that world.

@Nelladell yes it was. I don’t know who was doing that, maybe a farmer or one of their children or grandchildren for a little bit of money.