Luscious loquats

Loquats are ripening around town. When I first saw the clusters of bright orange, egg-shaped fruit on trees in Austin, I could hardly believe it. We'd eaten nisperos by the kilos in Spain, but I'd never seen or heard of an equivalent in my own language, on my own terrior, to borrow a wine term I've been around lately. It's those Texas winemakers who've pointed out to me lately how similar Texas growing conditions are to Spain's. The heat, the infrequent, unpredictable rain, the lack of deep, hard freezes. So it was in Austin where I first plucked a loquat/nispero off a neighborhood tree. The city-grown ones are much smaller and more tart than the ones we used to get for cents on the pound at the biweekly outdoor produce market in Alicante, but they are a bittersweet reminder of those beloved days abroad.

Julian got to try a loquat today and he proceeded to drop it off the porch and return to his uvas. Yep, it's official. Julian has a Spanish word. Since "uva" is easier to say than "raisin," we used the Spanish word with him — well, technically, pasas are raisins and uvas are grapes, but I'll explain that to him in Spanish 2 — and sometime in the past few days, he took to it. I've been doing the same thing with fresa (strawberry). I think Ian uses ami (friend), one of the French words he remembers from Canada, with Julian. Call it smorgasbord language education if you like, but I'm OK if he combines different languages and signs to communicate even if it means fewer words overall for a little while.

Another fun new thing that I forgot to post about was that Julian drank out of the hose the other day at Tom's. He was exploring the yard and was extra curious about the hose and spicket. So I turned on the water and his first instinct was to put his mouth in the fresh cold stream for a sip. Then he shared with his oh-so-proud mommy, soaking us both.

Get this, there was a San Francisco band called Loquat at SXSW this year. They're not half bad.