The Fruits Hunters.

 It's very regrettable that I've been absent from blogging for the last one month and a half since I was so busy in my business. Now I can managed to have spare time to blog so I hope many blogging friends will visit my blog again.

 As the weather getting cold, around the end of November, my family visit my father in law living in Nara, the city famous as an ancient capital of Japan, for helping him with harvesting persimmon fruits and kiwi fruits. There are many persimmon trees in the backyard and kiwi trees in his garden. He can't harvest them since his right size is paralyzed due to a stroke. That's why we help him every year and we have another reason. My kids are excited with the Fruits Hunting.

 When we saw the persimmon trees, we were shocked with less fruits on the trees than in last year. You can see easily how less the fruits is. But my kids were so helpful that they cooperated with us and my sister in law. You know why? Because they worked for "the sweet fruits of labor".
 Persimmon fruits are located on high branches and twigs so a tool called "a long-handled lopper" (one of my blogging friends taught the English name.)  is so convenient that we can harvest persimmon fruits efficiently. Even my daughter can prune and catch the fruits on the ground as the photo shown below.

My kids cooperated in harvesting the fruits.

 The total amount of the persimmon fruits was less than 1/3 of last year's harvest. My father in law said there is some kind of cycle in the amount of fruits. We don't know what works on the cycle but temperature, weather, and precipitation might affect the cycle.
 We love sweet persimmon fruits and wild birds love them, too! They seem to be able to pick sweet ones instinctively!
 After harvesting them, we peeled and serve them with hot green tea. The tea's bitter taste go well with the sweet fruits.

--from iPad