Want a Date?

   Date Palms…. Nipomo California.

  Indio California has many hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres of date gardens.  Driving through the tall trees, with their sweet delicious and exotic bounty hanging high overhead gives a strange surrealism to the drive.

   Some of those trees get VERY tall…. the taller they get, the harder and more dangerous/pricey it is to harvest. Also, the taller they are, the more value the palms accrue as landscape specimens.  I’ve known people who have been approached by landscapers who wished to purchase their palm trees, and offered ten thousand dollars for each tree.  So tall date palms often are sold, and dug from the ground with a  special truck that has a giant mechanical shovel to take the whole thing out in one bite. You never know where these trees will wind up.

   Here we have some palms in the center of Nipomo. They’ve been here since I ever recall…. I’d imagine they were planted here as small trees decades ago.

   Dates are a very good food…