Random Peaches August 18

I think I know why the former owner was such pain in the ass about the peaches. We've heard from many of the neighbors that Larry, the former owner, used to yell at people to leave his tree alone, yet he would never eat the peaches himself, either. We thought that was odd, a bit selfish even, but aligning with the whole "Larry was an eccentric neighbor" theme we've been hearing about. The tree is right there at the street, which is VERY tempting.

Anyway, I just had the cutest little Latina woman ring the bell, asking "how much" for some peaches. I told her to have some, they were free, and she looked shocked. "Free??" she asked, as if I had just told her that the wealth of the world was hers. I told her to help herself and she ran down the sidewalk to the tree. I saw that she collected a lot from the ground and a couple from the branches (she's so short, she couldn't reach much, since our neighbor Dixie has pilfered quite a few already). It started pouring rain and she still picked them. Then a guy in a giant shiny white truck came by and picked her up. She was chattering at him a mile a minute. It was hilarious. All in the pouring rain.

I wonder if Larry threatened to kill people who touched them. I've pictured him sitting out on the front porch, day after day, with a shotgun, like a weird guy on North Glen across from the weird "cute" house we saw when we were hunting for houses. He glared menacingly at us when we were showing that house, as if we were pelting him with olives or something. I can totally see Larry doing that, even though we never met him.

We've had several neighbors ask for peaches as well and we've said yes to all. There's plenty to go around and I can't take advantage of them before they go bad (same with the apples, although we think we either have very selective squirrels, left-handed squirrels, or Dixie can only manage to harvest so many from one side). Maybe we'll be slightly more stingy next year? Or if there are any left over we should donate them to a food shelter. If we had had the prescence of mind this year, we would have done it this year, but I fear it's too late for the rotting apples in back.

Fruit trees seem to make people happy. We need more.

Between that and the opportunity to watch a storm blow up around us today (and test our gutters that need tweaking, apparently), it was a nice, distracting day around work.

I LOVE living here.