Yeah, okay, I know lychee-tinis are SO 2012. But a lychee smoothie? With vanilla almond-milk and crushed ice?
Lychee warm from the tree, with the leathery rind splitting under the pressure of a thumb?
Or a plain frozen slurry of lychee, gobbled straight from the cup?
So many shirts at our house have been transformed into "work shirts" by the application of loquat juice.
Plant blackberry canes, forget about them, come back a few years later and they (Rosascea family) have established a stable government, border security, and a thriving economy.
Others, like apples at the Would-Be Farm, are fussier and more delicate. In Florida, I think the fussy ones are the lychees. (We'll avoid the idea of citrus, what with canker and citrus greening and my neighbor with the Roundup through the fence.)
We've planted a couple of lychees, but they break your heart: plenty of leaves, but year after year no fruit at all. Mr. Linton occasionally brandishes the loppers and tells the tree: "Fruit or these. Your choice."
Over the past ten years or so, when the weather and the trees actually do produce a crop, roving thieves have stripped the tree of fruit overnight. Seriously, stealing fruit from my very lawn. It's enough to make a mare bite her colt.
But then comes the odd pay-out year. When the tree is heavy with fruit and Uncle Markie has put an actual fence around the front yard with the eldest of the lychees, which strangely enough, DOES keep the damnable sneak-theives away. When there are buckets of lychees. An extravagance of the pearly goodness. When, at least for a week or two, lychees are our favorite fruit. |