Nature Notes
An embarrassment of riches.
The little Casita des Zapatos is old. It was built in 1954 (same as yours truly) and many of my trees date back that far, or close. As good as a year as this was for the mangos, the avocado tree is out to compete in the ridiculous amount of fruit olympics. This tree was a graft, way back when, and the main trunk produces pear-shaped fruit of good size, with thin skins that zip off like a banana peel, small seeds and thick, delicious meat. But at some point in the past 55 years, a sucker came off the root stock, and nobody ever cut it down, so the tree has a second, also good-sized trunk. On that side of the tree, the fruit is small, and almost round, with thick, crumbly skins and giant seeds and thin meat. It is equally delicious, though.
This year the root stock side of the tree has borne fruit like never before. There must be hundreds of avocados, growing in clusters like grapes. One branch was so loaded that the RLA built a crutch for it, to keep it from snapping under the weight. The nice thing about avocados is that they don’t ripen on the tree, so you can pull them off as needed, let them ripen in a brown paper bag on the window sill, and have a never-ending supply of guacamole. The nice thing about guacamole is that you can freeze it (just don’t put the onions and tomatoes in before you do; add those after you defrost it) and it lasts forever.
Here is my Tex-Mex guacamole recipe, exactly as written for me 30 years ago by my TINY friends (TINY, for those who aren’t old enough to remember, were Texans In New York, a very large population in the late 70s, when The Lonestar Cafe was the toast of 5th Avenue, with its giant iguana on the roof, red eyes glowing in the night.)
2 big avocados cut in 1/2 inch chunks
1 chopped up big onion (green onions are great too)
1 big handful chopped serrano chili peppers (green)
1 chopped green pepper
1 big tomato cut in 1/2 inch chunks
salt and pepper and lime juice
Just mix these with a big spoon. DO NOT MASH.
As ever, this is part of the Nature Notes meme.
The only time I get to see avocados is in the supermarket and I don’t usually buy them. But if I had your tree, I would be using them all the time. Thank you for the recipe, I am sending it my daughter who loves guacamole. Thank you for posting to Nature Notes… Michelle
How wonderful to have such wealth in your garden! I tried growing avocadoes here but our soil at times becomes saline and there is not enough water for them here anyway and they all died.
3 trips down southerer this year so far. Yes, the mangoes were amazingly prolific. Avocodos? Don’t get me started! (channeling Billy Crystal here). My grandfather borrowed $2k from a judge he knew, and bought 100 acres in Homestead in 1920 or thereabouts. He planted them in “Alligator Pears”, and as he needed to, he sold off some acreage a little at a time to put his sons (my Dad and Uncle)through college, and for other things. When he died at 99.75 in 1987, he still had 1.5 acres from that original investment, worth more, I think, than $2,000.
He always liked growing things, and was very proud of his avocados. I never developed a taste myself. I like mangoes, though.