I found the last pawpaw on the ground the day after I posted the photo, and I ate it yesterday. It tasted much better than the other two—maybe like a cross between a peach and a cantaloupe and very smooth. And it had four seeds!
Today I found a wild American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) that had just fallen in the road. (It wasn’t there the first time I walked by.) I have been watching the persimmons change color on the tree and have shaken the branches several times without success. You—or at least I—can’t simply pick persimmons from the tree; they need to be really, really ripe. (Never mind that I need a stick to even reach a lower branch!)
Persimmons make me think of my late cousin Peggy, who made delicious persimmon pudding and always sent leftovers back up the mountain with me when I visited her and other of my mom’s family in Hickory. (My mouth is watering as I write this!) It would take a lot of these wild persimmons to make a pudding, and I simply eat them. I saved seeds last year and grew several small trees that I will write about in another post.
Summer continues on the way out, and autumn is coming. You know these are the Blue Ridge Mountains, don’t you?
French Broad Hollow Ramble 