Yesterday, before my road trip down south, Caroline and I were on our morning walk when, lo and behold, four big brown paper bags of pink grapefruits were sitting curbside. We were not interested in leaving even one for anyone else; for all we knew, someone would abscond with as much of our treasure as they could carry and would be coming back for more. Taking possession of these heavy bags laden with 54 pounds or almost 25 kilos of these sweet, homegrown orbs of wowness, we turned around and darted back home. We hadn’t gotten far before the handles of one of the paper bags Caroline was carrying tore off. No problem in my mind; I’ll carry that bag up in my arm, and she can use the handles on two of the three good bags. But as I went to pick up my bag with a functioning paper handle, it was no longer in that functioning state. All we could do was leave Caroline on the street guarding the goods so I could speed walk home and fetch the car. Before long, our grapefruits were home and on their way to being juiced.

I’d like to point out that our fortunes have been incredible this year because back in January, another neighbor put out some rather large boxes of hundreds of grapefruits. We walked over as she was finishing up, allowing us to verify they were indeed free for the taking and not intended for someone special who would be by shortly to haul them off. We packed up as many bags as we could and dragged them home. Not satisfied, we turned around and went and took more. By the evening, we were on our third load and felt that the more than 120 pounds or so we’d collected were probably enough. It takes quite a while to juice so many grapefruits, but the opportunity to pour some local tree-ripened pink grapefruit juice into a glass and then top that off with sparkling water is a treat not wasted on us. While it was a sad day a few weeks ago when the last bottle of frozen juice was finally gone, we were thankful to have had this amazing indulgence. Then, like a miracle, the gods of citrus smiled down upon us once again, gifting the Wises with more of the sweet nectar of Mrs. Fruit’s bosom.