Fruit Picking at Dawn Garden

Last week we saw a sign in our clubhouse that said "Fruit picking Saturday at 10:00.  Meet in front of building 9"  That's our building so we decided to check it out.  David, Emma, Heidi, and I all came out with some other families that live here.  I think we were the only Americans or even foreigners.  The Dawn Garden man explained what we were going to do in Chinese and one of the women helped translate for us.

The first trees we went to were the persimmons.  I have never had them before and David said he tasted one when he was in elementary school.  We heard that they are sour.  At first the guards climbed up the ladders to get them but soon they let kids go up and pick some too.  Of course Emma the not shy girl was up in the tree very fast.  Heidi finally decided to try it too.  She wasn't scared but maybe it wasn't a "cool" enough activity for her at first.

Next we went to the pomelo tree.  Pomelos are like really big grapefruit that are green.  We have tried some in China and they were just OK, but the ones we had in Vietnam were really good.  There were only 3 on the tree but Emma marched over and of course ever the charmer she got the guards to give her one of them.

The last fruit we picked were mandarin oranges.  Some of them over here get picked when the skin is still green.  Our oranges were green but they told us to pick them so we did.  There weren't very many but we got a few.   There was one in the very back of the tree where the ladder wouldn't go so David jumped up to get it.  You can't tell in the picture very well but that's him jumping up for the last orange.

Here is a picture of our fruit that we picked.  It was a little different than getting pears in Idaho but we still had fun!