Thorns & satsumas

Here's one of life's little lessons: Never prune fever trees in the wind. Here's another: Never use a pair of loppers to cut a slightly too thick fever tree branch above your head, without noticing that said head is positioned right in between the two lopper-handles you're trying to force together.

Fever trees ? One of our most beautiful acacias - or it was until the Australians decided that "acacia" better fitted their thornless mimosas & we should call our thorned acacias "senegalensis". Yes, I know there's more to it than that, but with a lopper-whacked skull & thorn-stabbed arms I don't really care that much right now.

Point is, it's while I was entangled in the fever trees that I noticed the satsumas. They'd quietly been ripening in the little citrus grove between the fever trees & the pomegranate hedge. Now, isn't that something. Just as the persimmons finish, the satsumas begin.