Mom sent me to school with a Quick Draw McGraw lunch box. It contained a peanut butter and butter sandwich on homemade white bread, wrapped in wax paper. A bag of Fritos. And Gerber’s Strained Apricot because I liked it, but in a different container so I wouldn’t be embarrassed. For fifteen cents a week, we got a small carton of milk.
One day this girl in fourth grade showed up with a little bag of jewels in her lunch. They were gorgeous. And she gave me some and they were the best thing I ever ate. Mostly we ate casseroles from the Minute Rice and Campbell’s Soup families, so it might have been a low bar. But still.
They were pomegranate seeds.
I was indulged with a pomegranate every year after that. I carefully excavated my way into them with the delicacy of a safecracker and coaxed off layers of seeds without spilling a drop. It looked like a gift from royalty.
When I learned you could grow desert-Mediterranean pomegranates in Portland, I was all over it. I planted one and it grew a bit and then one year it exploded with fiery orange blossoms followed by real pomegranates and when they were about ping-pong size the whole shrub keeled over. The next one I planted did the same thing, only with far fewer flowers. It occurred to me that where I went wrong was not tending it while wearing a long white tunic and sandals. That would have made it feel more confident. I put on my bathrobe and flip-flops and planted a third.
The third one made it through a couple flower-free summers, but eventually about half of it keeled over. I staked up the remainder, reasoning that the now-older trunk might have gotten stout enough to hold up new growth the next year. And it sort of did. The new growth is on the rangy side, though, and wants to flop over. Especially if it gets a dab of water on it. Such heavy, heavy drops on those tiny princess leaves! “I swan,” my pomegranate said, raising the back of a long branch to its botanical forehead, “won’t these blessed rains never cease,” and then it done swooned all the way to the ground.
We had the normal amount of rain this summer. None. And then we had a decent downpour in the beginning of September, for a few hours. It was a welcome event. My pomegranate, however, has keeled over. And this year it had a pomegranate on it. Ordinarily I’d clip up the debris and cart it away, but I’m leaving the sucker right where it is in case the pomegranate keeps growing. I can put it on the counter next to the single squash I got from my $4 squash plant. (I had two, but a squirrel took one chomp out of one of them and stranded it in the path.)
One thing a good gardener does in these situations is to try replanting in a different location. Plants are little fuss-bottoms. But every time I got a new pomegranate in a pot, I’d look around the garden for an empty spot, and the sucker always ended up in the same place. It’s “the place where the pomegranate goes,” in my dense logic. It makes just as much sense to pull the old plant out, wait 30 seconds, and then plug it right back in.
That might work, actually.
Addendum. When I went out to check on my pomegranate, it was missing. Turned up stranded in the path with one chomp out of it.
Squirrels are passive-aggressive little bastards. They’ve done that with my tomatoes. One bite, then leave the rest right in front of my back door.
Unlike raccoons, they don’t wait until it’s Just Right, either. They take one chomp of anything.
True. I inherited a wooden machinist’s cabinet from my grandfather. It was painted in peeling white. I sanded it down and repainted it black.
It was sitting outside drying and I surprised a squirrel as he settled in to chew on it.
Pomegranate is a lovely poetic word. Also, persimmon.
I’ve been growing a grapefruit tree in a pot from a grapefruit seed that I started around 30 years ago. It spends summers on the patio and winters in the greenhouse, where it is caressing the ceiling 15 feet above with little whispery leaf noises. It has tossed off a few flowers in its captive life. I don’t expect fruit, but then, I never expected it would live so long.
And now it’s this whole thing. What a shame! We had a lemon tree in a pot that we were able to keep outside for years and it did produce one lemon one year, and it took 6 months to ripen, and Homeless Dave came along and ate it right when Our Dave was planning to harvest it. But it made lots of blossoms and lemon blossoms are the BEST.
Those pestiferous squirrels! They do the same thing to our Italian plums every year. One chomp per fruit. I used to ask Santa to put a pomegranate in my stocking every year and he usually came through. I thought that was the best possible treat when I was a kid. Funny how I rarely buy them now that they’re more abundant and less expensive.
One chomp per plum? That’s a LOT of chomps. I got my pomegranate in my stocking too!
I used to eat baby food apricots too-even as an adult, but never in public.
I’m trying to think what Mom disguised them in. Did we even have plastic containers then?
“I swan,” my pomegranate said, raising the back of a long branch to its botanical forehead…” Lawd.
And I’m a Gerber baby peaches kinda girl, myself.
Li’l tidbit fo you southern gals.
I have a friend in LA, lives near Loyola Marymount U..she has a middle sized back yard, and a pomegranate tree..maybe 8 ft tall. It produces 6-10 fruit each flowering, sometimes twice a year. I’ve never figured out what to do with them, not just there, but from stores. I like the flavor ok, but the seeds….tried doing a pomegranate reduction sauce a couple times, was unimpressed.
She also has two lemon trees, that produce orange sized lemons, that need very little sugar for lemonade. It’s LA, what can you say.
In my dream world I have citrus trees in my front yard but I don’t live in a warm clilmate.
We feel your pain. Such a shanda…
You know from it.
Meh- cant figure out the appeal of the seeds myself. But I’d join the a posse to round up squirrels and raccoons in a heartbeat…
When I was a kid I would eat those seeds one at a time and shuck a clean seed from my mouth the whole way. Now I pop in a bunch at once and extricate a somewhat pulpy seed wad. I miss my younger self sometimes.