What is the most popular fruit? Is it bananas? Actually it is tomatoes - but we don't treat them as fruit. For what we consider fruit, it is in fact bananas. But would we guess watermelon in the number 3 spot and apples number 4 after that? Then we have oranges, grapes, mango and guava, pineapple, peaches, pears, pumpkin, papaya, plums, dates and in 15th spot strawberries.
The consumption of bananas is 116,780, 000 tons vs strawberries at only 8,885 tons. Bananas are such a countable thing - over 100 billion bananas are consumed a year - that's 75% of the annual tropical fruit trade.
Our current fruit is peaches - they are ripe in Niagara. The earliest ones are not freestone. I wonder what variety I bought yesterday - the popular ones are listed as fantasia, harblaze, garnet beauty, harrow diamond, and red haven. There are fifteen different varieties grown in Niagara. But you don't find orchards with the names of varieties at the rows - not like grapes where the variety is nicely displayed.
With all these varieties of peaches we don't seem to purchase by cultivar - not like apples. The pint, quart and 4-quart baskets all say "peaches." Maybe there isn't a lot of taste difference between the varieties. You can compare the peach picking spots in Niagara. and some of them list their varieties. To pick your own peaches today comes with an entrance fee of $4 per person - I guess that's the "selfie-fee". I go to the fruit stands in my area - they are all listed in this article on Niagara's fruit stands HERE. It is nice to see them showcased and appreciated.
Do you know about glitter? I read the New York Times article in December 2018 explaining what glitter is and I still am perplexed by it.
It is all over the floor of the Museum, the result of many trees of decorations. There will be more as the trees are taken down tomorrow and Wednesday. I quote the second paragraph of that entertaining NY Times article HERE to give you a sense of its presence in our lives today.
"Aluminum metalized polyethylene terephthalate settles over store windows like dazzling frost. It flashes like hot, molten gold across the nail plates of young women. It sparkles like pure precision-cut starlight on an ornament of a North American brown bear driving a car towing a camper van. Indeed, in Clement Clarke Moore’s seminal Christmas Eve poem, the eyes of Saint Nicholas himself are said to twinkle like aluminum metalized polyethylene terephthalate (I’m paraphrasing). In homes and malls and schools and synagogues and banks and hospitals and fire stations and hardware stores and breweries and car dealerships, and every kind of office — and outside those places, too — it shines. It glitters. It is glitter."
I hope you hop over and read about this strange and amazing substance that is now completely part of Christmas.
I found a joke to brighten up our Monday morning:
I saw on the news that a truck carrying almonds collided with another truck carrying glitter. Apparently the road was covered with with almonds and glitter. And I thought, "That's pretty nuts"
This 'field' of red Gerbera's makes a nice December picture.
