still learning

date palms are planted as ornamental palms here in the languedoc. it doesn’t appear anyone is actually tending them with the intention of harvesting the dates. we asked our neighbor jean-luc why that may be, and he shrugged and suggested it was because there was not enough difference between daytime and evening temperatures, as there is in the desert.  i helped myself to several skeins of fruits the other day that were dangling above our car in the parking lot of carrefour while steve and joseph went to buy school supplies. i didn’t get around to photographing them right away, and in the meantime, several fruits had fallen off and started to ripen to a light date-brown.  so we tried them. you’ll never guess. they tasted just like dates.

date palm fruits