And now we know... the REST of the story...

I've been laughing for five minutes.

My parents had a pear tree in their back yard that produced so many pears I
would go over once a year and cut
notches in the ends of boards to prop up the limbs to keep them from being
torn off by the shear weight of all those
pears.

I never found out what kind of pear they were, but they were not Bartletts.
They would ripen and taste at least as
good as any pear I've ever eaten, but they had a shelf life of about one to
two weeks, unless you picked them while still hard and green and small -- in
which case they did not get as sweet and had a shelf life of about three
weeks.

Squirrels would start cutting them off as soon as they were golf ball size;
but there were so many pears the early cuts were not missed. Then, as the
pears neared full size, we were grateful for the assistance from the
squirrels, because we picked up the undamaged ones and supplied all the
neighbors with as many as they wanted, and I would eat about
five a day.

The pears that were on the ground had to be picked up and raked up almost
daily. Otherwise they would sour on the
ground and begin to smell like a brewery and then like... well sour, rotten
pears. Flies would come from everywhere and wasps by the hundreds. The
wasps were not aggressive when away from their nests, but neighbors and
guests
were hard to convince of that, and tended to fear them and gripe.

I tried making pear preserves from the green ones, but ended up with
something more like apple sauce. Those pears
would lose all their firmness and, for some reason, no amount of Certo I put
in them would result in a good jell that would have allowed me to call what
was in those jars jam or jelly.

Talk about a love-hate relationship. The neighbors loved Mom and Dad, but
they HATED that pear tree... even though they liked the pears when they ate
them.

One year a horrific wind storm came and blew off nearly all the pear from
the tree when they were about 3/4 full size, and still firm, so I hired some
neighborhood kids to gather them in plastic grocery bags and take them door
to door and give them to whoever would accept a bag.

After that, when I would be taking a walk through the neighborhood, I would
hear people talking about "the pear man." I didn't tell them the pear man
was me.

Every year Dad would talk to me about maybe wanting to cut that old pear
tree down. And every year he lived (into his nineties) we decided, "Let's
wait 'til after the pears are over with."

After the pears were 'over with,' that old pear tree shaded half the back
yard and the neighbor's patio, so then it was
"Let's wait until winter." In winter it was "too chilly." Then would come
spring and "Let's wait 'til after the pears are over with."


g





"cat daddy" wrote in message
...

"ceed"
ceed@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqr stuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com
wrote in message news
On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:09:53 -0500, g wrote:

Anyhow -- here's a link with lots of
interesting stuff about the loquat tree:
http://meme.essortment.com/loquat_rjrg.htm
And if you'd like to try them out, here's where
you can order:
http://www.gemworld.com/LoquatTrees.ASP

Another interesting read! Thanks! On this page:

http://www.tytyga.com/loquat/loquatpg8.htm

they offer "cold hardy" Locquats. I wonder if I will be able to grow one
here in Austin?

Oh yeah........ I have a full-grown loquat that blesses me with tons of
fruit that are barely worth the effort to eat. Then, they drop on the
ground
and I'm blessed with swarms of flies for a couple of weeks. Then in the
Spring, there's a thick forest of babies to yank out of everything.
It's thick with fruit right now. I've come to wish for a blossom killing
freeze every Winter, but I'm not bitter...........