Fruit of the Tree

Favourite and Least Favourite Fruit.

In June of 2011 one group assignment focused on some of the bounty of nature that surrounds us. We selected a fovourite and least favourite fruit as our topic to reflect and write on. The writing could take any form (poetry, essay, short story, etc.) and the depth of detail and expression was left open to the individual writers. There was great diversity in length, format, and opinions expressed on several different fruit. Some pieces took the form of expository writing, others more the form of a memoir. The example below was more mixed and 'artistic' in nature.


FAVORITE FRUIT? But I like them all!

I was raised in a home with a large garden with dozens of fruit trees. Among them were oranges, tangerines, plums, guineps, grapefruit, shaddock, limes, just to name a few.

My favorite was always the orange and tangerine of course. My father would wake us each morning with a peeled orange - this was given to us through the open window. A lot of people really don't know how to peel an orange so as to get every bit of the fruit down our stomachs. Most people just cut them in half and suck them. Not me though. I peel the rhind with a very sharp knife - going round and round until I come to the bottom end of the orange. Then I peel the pith off and there's the right way of doing that also, where the pit just comes off so easily - otherwise if you do it the other side up it leaves a lot on the orange. Then we break the orange into pegs and oolla - we eat it peg after peg. I can remember having so many tangerines in our garden that we supplied the Government with bags of them. I also took a lot of them to school for the teachers and friends.

The tamarind was my least favorite fruit. It's enclosed in a shell - very hard to get into. However, once we get the tamarind out, especially a green one, and dip it in salt, it is very nice. Ripe tamarinds can be used by taking the meat off the huge seed and mixing it with sugar and oolla, we've got tamarind balls.


Now to write a poem on my favorite fruit is okay
But to write one on my least favorite will take all day
Oranges are sweet nearly all the time
Pegged or cut in half to suck them is fine

Tamarind trees however are huge and hard to climb
Their limbs can be very small, tamarinds hard to find
These trees are strong and very wild with leaves so green
Tamarinds dipped in salt from my hand can be seen

I could go on all day or evening writing about fruit but I'm so hot right now and tired, not to mention thirsty, I'm about to tackle a mango - another favorite fruit of mine.

By: Joan Wilson