The morning has been a busy one around the Ryan homestead. The huge pine branch which fell is gone as are several branches and a dead pine tree or two. I had to keep an eye on my landscaper as many more trees would have gone on the chopping block. He loves to cut down trees. All the ground brush was also cut down then everything was blown clean, including the deck. The yard looks great. The deck needs a bit of washing because of the birds, and I’ll do that later.

Finally we have a glorious summer day, sunny and cool, and in the 70’s. It rained again yesterday so the grass is staying green and the flowers are tall and filled with buds. My front garden will soon be awash with brilliant colors. Every morning when I get my papers I check on the garden. I stand and marvel at how fresh and beautiful it all looks.

I really have nothing to do today, but I thought I’d go to the library and Agway. A few of my deck flowers need a boost so I’ll buy some annuals which didn’t find any homes and supplement the ones on my deck. I ate tomatoes yesterday, cherry tomatoes, straight from my garden. They were sweet and juicy.

When I lived in Ghana, I had a bowl of fruit for lunch every day. The bowl was filled with oranges, pineapple, pawpaw, mango and bananas. I never tired of that same meal. The fruit was as fresh as any fruit I had ever tasted. Ghanaian oranges are green and on the small side, but they are the sweetest of the fruits. I used to buy one or two to eat when I was on the road traveling. Aunties and small girls would come to the bus window to sell oranges from trays on their heads, and I always bought a couple.

My love for pineapple comes from Ghana. Before eating the fresh Ghanaian pineapples, I had only eaten Dole’s cut up pineapples in thick juice from a can. I’m not even sure we could buy fresh pineapples when I was growing up. Had I seen one in the flesh, I would have thought it a strange fruit with all the nobs on its skin and the green sprouting top.

Sometimes I think about the foods I ate when I was a kid. Most vegetables came from a can, corn in the summer being an exception. The fruits were apples, oranges and bananas, nothing exotic unless you count green apples. I don’t remember farm stands anywhere near we lived, and farmers’ markets were a long way off in the future.

I know it was Ghana which totally changed my palate. The fruits and vegetables I ate were fresh from the market. Some I hadn’t ever seen or heard of before, but I tried them and mostly liked them. The chickens were still alive when I bought them but the beef wasn’t. It was iffy. I didn’t really care. I ate it anyway.

I found out there was more to the global world of food than just Italian and Chinese. Though I didn’t think about it at the time, one of the best side benefits of being a Peace Corps volunteer was an educated palate grown out of a curiosity about trying and liking new foods.