Asking For Apricots

About this time every summer I seriously consider purchasing an apricot tree sampling and planting it somewhere in the backyard. Luckily, this thought only lasts a couple days as I cruise around the neighborhood and see how many apricot trees there are and how many are just totally loaded. In fact our next-door neighbors have a wonderful apricot tree. We should just ask them when the apricot's are on. We actually got a few apricots from the next-door neighbor this year but they complained about how few apricots they had, something to do with the lack of water or something. Dianne did make a number of pints of great apricot jam and I pretty much thought that was it for apricots for this year.

Dianne came home on Saturday all excited telling me that she had scarfed up a number of apricots that had fallen off a tree a couple blocks from our house and she wanted to go back and ask the owner of the property if we could pick some of the apricots off their tree—obviously they were not going to do anything with them—and she asked if I would go with her for moral support and asking. This clearly is new behavior on Dianne's part but I thought what the heck why not, although it can say is “no”! So we grabbed a couple of plastic bags from the market and a couple of flats that we had gotten at the movies earlier in the day( the kind they give you for your popcorn and drinks to carry back to your seats and). Actually those pretty bold thinking on our part thinking the owners would turn us loose on the apricot tree.

The property on which the tree lives has always been a mystery to me and my wife. It's a pretty large Spanish-style property all behind a high white brick fence. There's a number of buildings on this property I've noticed just rolling or driving by sense the place is on the way up to the main drag. The place always reminded me of like a compound – – I always thought of as mysterious as heck. Here we were on Saturday night walking up to the front door and knocking. I was totally blown away 30 seconds after a nice lady opened the door saw our bags, before we had a chance to say anything she just broke out in a smile and nodded her head said “knock yourself out pick as many as you like”. Of course this led to introductions and open communication. These folks are totally new in our neighborhood, only here a couple weeks or months and they seem fun as heck. We visited we got to know each other we probably spent an hour and a half there. The owners gave us a tour of the property it was amazing, it was even a swimming pool in the backyard that I knew nothing about. The compound is amazing as great old buildings that would make wonderful shops. I am totally envious.

This was totally the end of the apricots season the apricots were falling from the tree even as we spoke. They even let us use their special device which was a container on the end of a pole that you could use to hook and pull fruit off into the container. It worked pretty good and in no time we had both flats full of apricots. The apricots for small, soft but full of flavor. Dianne and I went home and Dianne put together three or 4 pints of apricot jelly. The next day, Sunday Dianne assembled a bottle of wine, a pint of jelly and a few other items to welcome our new neighbors and friends to a neighborhood. Who would've believed such good could come from asking for apricots?