The great avocado roundup

I have not quite decided where I want to go with this Blog - my first one was focused on my goal last year to conquer the Cable Route on Half Dome. (Mission Accomplished...barely). This one has no specific goal or end date, other than documenting my adventures (?) in retirement, and miscellaneous comments on retired life in general. I am going to try and avoid political commentary, but that’s hard to do given the current state of affairs in Washington, so there will be an occasional jab or to, or stolen lines from Bill Mayer or John Oliver. (I really wanted to use Oliver's theme song at my last presentation at Google...Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. I was talked out of it)

This entry is all about why I want to get out of where I live, into someplace where someone other than myself has to do all the farming and yard work. Not an elder ghetto (Active Adult...blah), but something where there is no backyard and someone else does all the work. It may take a while, but we will find it.

So back to this story. The house we currently live in has a large backyard, at least for the South Bay, filled with all kinds of fruit trees, some of which we hate: Persimmons, Miniature peaches, apples (2); some we tolerate since the fruit tastes good, but there are too many to eat: Plums/Pluots; and a few we love; lemons (huge tree), Mission fig (the best), orange, lime, Meyer lemon. And we share a neighbor’s enormous avocado tree, which must be 30’ high, and grows over our large outbuilding (the outdoor basement) , affectionately referred to as “the barn”.

The tree produces large volumes of fruit, way too much for my wife and I to consume (we would need a lot of chips to go with the guacamole), so we give a lot away every year. I was a hit at work when I harvested a load and brought them in. Everyone loves guacamole. Unfortunately, the tree keeps growing onto the roof, which is not so good structurally, so once a year, I have to do some significant trimming.

I must have skipped last year, or maybe the rains spurred abnormal growth, but when I climbed up to the roof to trim the plum tree, Lo and behold, the back half of the roof was covered by the tree. Not over it, but on it. I guess resting on the roof was better than growing up. There were tons of small avocado of course. So, my 5 minute task became much more strenuous and time consuming.

The mess on the roof

Out came the branch loppers, and then the chain saw (I do enjoy that). I was knee deep in fruit, branches, saw dust and bugs.

Chain saw, loppers, and a mess of branches

Three hours later, I had three large buckets of avocados, and a huge pile of branches. So much for Friday...or whatever day this is (I”m retired …. you tend to forget).

Fortunately, my yard guy was willing to haul out the tree parts (and will be happy to take some of the fruit as well), one of our friends will take another dozen, and the rest will go to a food bank. Everyone’s happy.  

Guacamole anyone?

Having now spent the better part of this week doing landscaping, I’m wondering if maybe I found my new career. No, not really. But I’m ready to start spending some time doing fun things.

One nice thing about being on a roof, once you are done working and are close to collapse from heat exhaustion and dehydration, is you do get a nice view of the neighborhood, and can see what everyone else has in their yards. Unfortunately, adding photographs to the blog would be an invasion of privacy (heh heh...but I know what’s back there), so I just included one of my own yard. Nothing weird in mine except for gnomes and solar lights. Kind of looks like Disney Land at night.