Trespassing for Fruit and Market Finds

I've never eaten loquats before yesterday.  I don't know if I've ever heard of loquats before a few weeks ago.  My friend mentioned them to me during a phone conversation, and then she gave me some loquat jelly.  It's delicious, and I remember her discussing the location of a few trees with somone else on FB.  Yesterday, I decided to try to find some.

Long story short, I drove over the to quasi-public park and found a loquat tree almost on the street outside of the main gate.  As I was picking fruit, some homeowner came over and told me the park was closed and that I was trespassing.  He asked me what I was doing, and I said, "Picking loquats."  Then he asked me if I even knew what a loquat is.  Hello?  I said I'm picking loquats.  Obviously if I called them loquats, I know what they are. 

I left and went to our downtown market, and lookie lookie at what I found for sale.

 



















A loquat tree!  If you're curious about loquats, here's a link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loquat

There is a girl at the market who sells "exotic" plants, at least plants that aren't commonly sold in these parts.  Her booth also had a variety of citrus trees, and last year, I wanted one, but they were out of my price range.  Yesterday, she had some sizes closer to what I could afford plus a few I couldn't.  So, I bought what I was told was a meyer lemon, but when I got it home, I looked at the tag and saw that it was a kaffir lime.  I didn't really want a kaffir lime tree, so I had to go back to the market.  I just wanted to trade, but of course, they didn't have a meyer lemon of that size, so the gentleman who helped me upgraded my purchase and I got one of the larger meyer lemon trees for the price of a small one.  Awesome!

Here's my new meyer lemon tree!

The lemon tree has to be potted because our winters are too harsh for citrus, and I'll probably pot the loquat tree for now until I decide where I can put it. 

If I can get everything fruiting and keep the birds and tree rats away, I will have quite the menagerie of fruits on the homestead.  Loquats, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches, strawberries, figs (two varieties), ground cherries, garden huckleberries, pomegranates, oranges, meyer lemons, and apples (I don't expect apples really because they don't get enough sunlight where I have them.)

Oh, and props to our outdoor kitty (OP2).  We saw her stalking a tree rat in the backyard yesterday.  I told her to park herself under the peach tree and do her job as a farm kitty.

Happy homesteading,


Candace