Most days, we have lunch on our balcony, and it usually includes avocados. Not from Mexico (where much of its production is apparently controlled by a drug cartel) or from California (where they drain water from an already dried-out soil). Our avocados come from, uhm…
Anyway, we love avocados. We eat them mindfully, to make up for the fact that we probably shouldn’t.
Two very hard avocados have been sitting on the round table on our balcony deck for five days. They are meant to ripen, and the sun has done its best, as has the company of bananas. None of it works: they are not yielding.
Today, a possible explanation occurred to us. Just look at the view. The Vancouver skyline to the right. The mountains opposite, majestic and assured (if you look west you can still see some snow). The river (or is it a firth, or an ocean estuary?) peacefully lapping away, only disturbed occasionally by a heron slightly adjusting its position, or a gull diving for a fish. Two or three old-fashioned cargo boats that have thrown out their anchor and are sitting dreamily on the water.
These avocados just want to contemplate the view for as long as they can. And who can blame them?
But for one avocado, the strategy backfires when a crow in one experienced swoop disfigures it with a few furious pokes.
