Five Pounds of Persimmons and a Winter Forecast

 

I bought five pounds of persimmons on Amazon because I heard you could predict the winter weather by looking inside a seed. There are more practical ways to check the forecast, but this one came with fruit.

According to the tradition, you split a persimmon seed lengthwise and look at the little white shape inside. A spoon means snow to shovel. A knife means cutting cold. A fork suggests a milder winter. Quite a responsibility for a fruit seed.

Then, on our Sunday Cousins Zoom call, my cousin began talking about persimmons in south Arkansas. They had cut open a seed and found a spoon. By that reckoning, we will be shoveling snow this winter. She sent me a photograph, so I have evidence of the spoon, if not yet of the snow.

I remembered eating persimmons in Australia, but I seldom see them in our local supermarkets. I associated them with somewhere far away. Meanwhile, my cousin had them in south Arkansas, and Travis had grown up with two persimmon trees in his pasture.

He said they liked to give the green fruit to their visiting cousins from Indiana.

If you have ever bitten into an unripe persimmon, you will understand the entertainment value of this arrangement (for the people handing out the persimmons). An unripe persimmon can make you pucker up.  Apparently, the Indiana cousins were given an opportunity to discover this for themselves.

My sister had another use in mind. Throughout our conversation, she kept interjecting that we needed to make soap out of the persimmons so we wouldn’t smell like old people.

The rest of us were discussing fruit, family memories, and winter weather. She was pursuing a personal hygiene initiative.

I had ordered mine to inspect a seed. Now there was some suggestion that I ought to be making toiletries.

When my five-pound box arrived, it contained about twenty persimmons. Unfortunately, mine have no seeds. I had managed to purchase an entire box of weather-predicting fruit without the part that supposedly predicts the weather.

That was a disappointment. But they will still be good to eat, and they can furnish a picture for this story. My cousin’s photograph will supply the spoon. Between us, we have the necessary illustrations.

I haven’t committed to making soap.

For now, I am looking forward to eating the persimmons when they are ready. Travis’s story has made me particularly attentive to ripeness.

If we get snow this winter, my cousin will be able to say her persimmon called it. If we don’t, we will have something to discuss on another Sunday call.

And I expect my sister will remind us about the soap.  (I did order some persimmon body wash.)

Janis @ Maison Tranquille

Still Curious. Still Growing. Still Grateful.