Take the fruit of a neighbor\’s tree?
When my dad was in graduate school in Davis, he went to the campus fruit orchards with a few friends at night to pick fruit. Apparently they were caught once, but that hasn\’t stopped the urban foraging that is in our family.
When we were young, my sister and I went for \”adventures\”. In a \”ravine\” nearby, we picked blackberries. On routes throughout the neighborhood, we found ripe plums and loquat trees. The well-kept treasures were the guavas, easily hidden in the greenery. After living in Lafayette so many years, everyone in my family knows where the closest fruit trees are. We should start something like fallenfruit.org
As I grew older, I lost my thick skin. My parents apparently haven\’t. They have asked neighbors if they could pick loquat or the plums. And according to city ordinance, any part of a tree leaning over a fence to public property is free to the public. There\’s still questions of whether fruit on the tree can be picked. But nonetheless, my parents today stopped by a tangerine tree brimming with small orange fruits. They filled up a bag they happened to have in the car.
Save a penny now, save a dollar in the future? Another man\’s trash is another man\’s treasure? Sometimes. Most of the time, I would rather pay $4.99 for a box of tangerines than to suffer through the anxiety of being \”caught\” by the owner.
Right now, the lemon tree in the front yard is full of fruit. We have too many. Too bad nobody can see our lemon tree from the street. The bane of a private driveway.
There used to be a mullberry tree in our city. All the Persians who\’d be walking by would go onto the grass and pick some. We love mullberries. This was just outside of some apartments. The city cut it down.
strangely enough, i think the fruit of CMU is a mulberry and i have no idea what it is except this round pink thing that they use for our school mail client.
your parents should put a box out on the main street infront of your driveway with the lemons in and a sign saying \”help yourselves\”.
we do that for our apple trees in the orchard at the back of our house. we\’d never eat all the fruit they produce and people snap them up quickly too.