Banana plants after the freeze 2025-11-23

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Banana plants do this when frozen.

[Gretchen with her banana plants]
Gretchen with her banana plants

Not to worry. They’ll come back in the spring.

Meanwhile, Gretchen will lop their heads off with a machete. She says that makes them grow back better.

We did get some bananas to eat with breakfast.

-jsq

Cutting Sugar Cane 2025-11-09

A freeze is predicted for tonight, so yesterday we cut the sugarcane and bedded it down for the winter.

That means we buried it a few inches deep to keep it from freezing.

But we kept some cane for squeezing juice to boil to make cane syrup.

River helped. The other dogs thought it was boring.

[Cutting Sugar Cane, Some to squeeze and boil for syrup, Most to bed overwinter, to plant in the spring 2025-11-09]
Cutting Sugar Cane, Some to squeeze and boil for syrup, Most to bed overwinter, to plant in the spring 2025-11-09

Gretchen explains:
https://youtu.be/Pk1unm9K1nU?si=6R49ymVJQ-O4jEqf Continue reading →

Garter snake 2025-10-09

This small snake was in the front driveway.

You can tell by comparison with the pine straw that the snake is quite small, maybe 8 inches long.

[Snake with pine straw, sand, and pebbles]
Snake with pine straw, sand, and pebbles

I think it’s an Eastern Garter Snake, Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis.

What do you think?

-jsq

Two kinds of persimmons 2025-10-09

Evidently we’ve been mis-identifying our persimmons.

[Two kinds of persimmons]
Two kinds of persimmons

The prolific persimmon tree has acorn-shaped fruit like the red one here. Those are apparently Hachiya persimmons.

The younger tree with only a few fruit not yet ripe has flat-bottom persimmons like this yellow one. Those appear to be Fuyu persimmons.

See, for example, this GrubMarket blog post, Fuyu vs. Hachiya: How to Use California Persimmons.

They’re both varieties of the Oriental persimmon, Diospyros kaki.

-jsq

Persimmons to eat and to dehydrate 2025-10-05

Still picking those persimmons.

[Picked Fuyu persimmons]
Picked Fuyu persimmons

One was so ripe we went ahead and ate it.

The rest, we picked deliberately still orange, not red ripe, so Gretchen could slice them up and put them in the dehydrator. Continue reading →

Fuyu persimmons 2025-09-28

Update 2025-10-05: Persimmons to eat and to dehydrate 2025-10-05.

A very flavorful fruit, and sweet but not too sweet. Perfect to go with breakfast oatmeal.

[Persimmons on the tree, 2025-09-28 --jsq for OPF]
Persimmons on the tree, 2025-09-28 –jsq for OPF

These are Fuyu persimmons, a variety of the Japanese persimmon, Diospyros kaki.

Many moons that tree has been there since Gretchen planted it. This year it’s really bearing fruit. Continue reading →