Sugar Apple

Uncle Willard said the weather was warm unusually late and it tricked the sugar apple trees into a second fruiting.  We have never been here for sugar apple season.  Now that he handed one to us, we were not exactly sure how to eat it.

Days later when Jay jumped aboard, we showed him that the sugar apple had reached its appropriate softness, thereby exhausting our expertise on the matter.  Jay pulled it apart and had us scoop out the milky flesh with a spoon.  Other than communicating the sweet mellow flavor to the brain, the mouth is also responsible for separating the big black seeds from the fruit and spitting them out.  If the spoon came to close to the fruit skin when retrieving flesh, we got a bit of grit.  Do not bias the mind by thinking “apple” while eating it.  I would equate it more with sweet white yogurt, if, of course, that yogurt had big black seeds.  We both loved it and can only hope for the weather to play tricks on the trees again next year.

Our stay at Jay’s dock thus far has had its magical moments: we have been visited by fairies.  We step off the boat to tackle a project on shore, or for whatever reason, and come back to find treasures.  There is the citrus fairy, delivering key limes, lemons, sour orange and tangelos.  Yummy all by themselves, or juiced, or transformed into tart lemon bread.  There is also the fish fairy, having twice now delivered delectable strawberry grouper.  There is also the fresh hot bun fairy, visiting this time while we were still on the boat.  We were in nap mode after a night I only got 20 minutes sleep due to a cold front passage that blew us off the dock before the tide left us grounded with a 10 degree or so angle.  We were all straightened out the next day, snuggled under cover when we heard a knock on the boat and the announcement that fresh buns from the oven were in the cockpit.  We rolled over dreaming about warm bread and must have been in REM sleep and dead to the world when, hours later, the waffle fairy delivered two waffles – not into the cockpit, but all the way in to the galley.  We never knew it.  Glad it was the waffle fairy and not some malevolent creature.   We are not the only benefactors.  Barry and Jay were visited by the cinnamon roll fairy and Jan was visited by the pizza fairy.

No, we do not believe in fairies.  However, on this island compound of four structures and two docks, we seem perfectly incapable of finding each other when we want to deliver a kindness.  Why dwell on our incompetence?  I am going with fairies.

Love to all,

Dena