THE PERSIMMONS OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

Yesterday morning out in the waning mist clearing some more oak limbs, then out along the road stripping vines from where they riff along the tops of the tall kinmokusei in a beautiful autumn arrangement of golden hearts while working to strangle the trunk and limbs below, I hailed an upmountain neighbor, Mr. U., doing much the same thing out on his section of the road, and we got talking abut the goings on of the trees and land, life up here in general.

As we talked I gazed uproad into the demistifying scenery and saw there the wild persimmon trees I know are there but had forgotten about (the mind has its rooms and cupboards), what with all the outdoor and indoor stuff that has been filling my head as I know it.

The persimmons, conducting their own business not far from the roadside, were leafless now and in full display, hung with bright orange globes lit by the slant of morning sun like this was somewhere in the mind of Hieronymus Bosch, or even better, Le Douanier... I resolved to enter that depiction beyond price and grab a bunch of those goldies before the other monkeys got there, the red-faced yet conscienceless ones...

When I finally got up there I took my hand scythe from a cargo pocket of the skateboarder pants I use for gardening (lots of gussets, grommets, big+little pockets, superseams, fabric backup in the right places, built to last), so I could reach higher than pedestrian passersby (mainly mountain hikers and wild fooders) had been reaching; crowded as the trees were, all the low-hanging fruit was already gone. I used the scythe to hook the higher branches down to arm's reach and soon had a bag full of the large and small varieties of bright orange worlds (I also always have a big plastic shopping bag folded up in one of my cargo pockets for wildfooding).

One thing you can say about wild persimmons is that as hieronymous as they may appear from a distance, up close they can be really ugly. But don't let that fool you, it doesn't affect the flavor, seems to enhance it in fact. Wildness is like that; it brings to everything edible that certain flavor edge that is lost in the strictures of domestication. When wild persimmons ripen to softness, especially the tiny ones, there's not much there once you get the peel off, but what there is is really wild.

Flavor you just can't get in a painting.

MORNING AMBER

Out early this morning uncovering the firewood after days of rain, made an interesting and tasty discovery. One of the older stacks of wood had been extra well covered for some days because the rain-auguring winds had blown the folded tarp down over the front and back of the cord face, creating a dark, moist semitropical environment in there. So when I threw back one end of the tarp, the several slabs of oak at that end were covered in shimmering amber clouds of tiny red ants, scurrying to hide their even tinier white eggs from this sudden apocalypse. In just those few days they had built a complex, many-layered, fully functioning but impromptu nest! An hour later there was no sign of them. Nor were they or their eggs the tasty treat I mentioned at the beginning of this immediate tangent. Ten million ants cause tangents.

When I uncovered the other end of the cord, there on the top was a small cherry wood log with the bark off, cut maybe two years ago, damp with rain and festooned on both ends with beautiful amber garlands of wild kikurage (wood ear) (Western translations are often so unappetizing). Kikurage is a fungus that when sliced and cooked with just about anything (great in stir fries and soups) imparts a crunchy texture and mild flavor that goes well with all. They're also renowned for their health-giving properties.

They can be dried as well, becoming much less in volume, that is restored upon soaking. I used to get a lot of kikurage from an old apple tree root that was in our garden when we first moved in; kikurage likes dark damp in Spring to grow in, as pertained briefly for just one piece of all my firewood. But that's all it takes.