Fall Weather... Orange and... Purple!

Asters, Verbena and Angelonia are blooming wildly, turning all the little front garden into highlights of purple. Suddenly, it's cool and blustery. A N'oreaster is piling up off the coast and we've shot down to 65 degrees. Trees are turning before our eyes, with winds whipping the fading leaves over our heads. Everything here seems to be purple and/or orange - our VaTech friends would be delighted.

The asian persimmons appear to be decked in autumn pumpkins. There are hundreds of persimmons ripening on both the Hachiya and the Fuyu trees we planted eight years ago. It's their bearing year - every other year they produce astounding amounts of fruit and then rest for a season. I understand that the commercial production persimmon farms have a thinning, pruning regimen that keeps half the fruit spurs unproductive each year so that there is a good harvest repeatedly -- we've tried keeping up with thinning but eventually gave it up and have given the trees their freedom to do what they wish. I anticipated less harvest -- but it ended up being more.

The Hachiya is vibrantly upright, very fast-growing (we've pruned it repeatedly until giving up this past spring). It's sweet acorn-shaped persimmons always ripen first and are turning dark orange now, mid-September. Delicious, they are also full of 4 - 8 large seeds which sprout readily if they land in a protected place when we spit them out. The very latest ripening fruits will be more acrid, like the wild persimmons and will have to soften on the tree before eating.

The Fuyu has fruits easily three times the size of the Hachiya on all of its very slow growing, horizontal branches. We lost about 1/3 of the tree through Hurricane Isabel a few years back, but it valiantly healed the wound and continues slowly growing on. Its pumpkin fruits will be ripe at the end of October, amusing any Halloween guests. In the past, we have even sold Fuyu to local chefs if we had enough without any of the very typical black spots that show up randomly when they are fully ripe. Perhaps this year we'll have enough excited friends to give them all away. At $2 - $3 in the local markets, we have perhaps $350 worth of fruits on this one $35 tree. And Rob thought I was being extravagant when I bought them!