I’ve finally found a use for landscaping.

The “riverwalk” in San Antonio is a highly constructed, highly landscaped pathway following a man-made branch of the San Antonio river. One section of it starts at my hotel, and so every day this week I was able to walk down the path by the river to work.

One day after a “Fiesta” party at the office, Eric, my friend down here in San Antonio, wanted to show me something. So he walked across the road where a bridge went over the river, leaned down and picked some fruit of off one of the trees they had planted there.

They were yellow, and about the size of persimmons. He handed some to me, and we peeled and ate them. They were pretty good, apricot sweet with the texture of peaches.

It turns out that they were
“loquats”. The loquat tree is often used for landscaping down here, but since it takes a rather special combination of weather to cause them to bear fruit, it is unusual to find.

But it did give me the idea that landscaping good enough to eat is not a bad thing.