Lettuce Share

It’s a good day when you wake up to a bag of mangoes on your doorstep.

There’s a huge mango tree around the corner from us.  We watch it constantly.  It’s on our nightly walking route.  It must produce 100 mangoes each year, and it seems like we watch each one ripen individually…especially this year.   

Timing is crucial.  For as slowly as the mangoes ripen, they’re usually gone overnight.  They must pay or get paid to have someone come in and clean out the tree.  We missed a harvest one year, and now we’re like stalkers.  But this year Cooper knocked on the door a week early…so then came the real waiting.  Every day that passed had surely been a week.  John was swearing that he had begun involuntarily salivating at the sight of the tree.  So just when I didn’t even want to walk with them any more, the mangoes have arrived.  Yes, it’s a good day. 

But no thanks to me or John, Cooper’s our ticket.  We never see those neighbors.  If I ran into them at Publix, I wouldn’t know them but Cooper would.  His cute little face has been knocking on their door every year since we moved in to ask for some mangoes.  He absolutely loves them, and who would say no?

He’s already like shopping with a coupon at garage sales and now he’s getting a dozen mangoes delivered to our door for free.  Good day, good kid!  Here’s the sun setting behind the mango tree tonight…

…and a couple of mango facts:

• Mango is the most widely consumed fruit in the world.
• There are hundreds of mango varieties ranging in size from 6 to 26 ounces.
• Mangoes or mangos are both acceptable spellings according to Webster’s. (But I sided with spellcheck on this one because it’s not potatos or tomatos.) 

This is a mix of mangos bought at the Old Miakka Farmers Market.  The varieties are Edward & Earl, Van Dyke and Apple mango. 

Source for mango facts:

Thomas, C. (2006). Melissa’s great book of produce: Everything you need to know about fresh fruits and vegetables. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.