Day 2 of Project Gratitude: Feijoa

Today I am grateful for the foresight of the owner who planted not one, but two, feijoa trees in our backyard. The free produce every year is always welcome. And not just for us, but for family and friends who share in the bounty, and I suspect for our neighbours, too, who reap the harvest of what falls on their side of the fence.

And I'm grateful for two little girls who helped me scoop the flesh out of literally hundreds of feijoa so that there are now three feijoa crumbles cooking in the oven while two feijoa coconut loaves cool on the bench.

In a few days we will again have a surplus of feijoa begging for us to use somehow - it's a phenomenon right across the country at the moment - and for that, too, I am grateful (even if my hands and fingers and legs protest from standing and scooping, scooping).

Perhaps I wasn't as grateful as I should have been when we first moved into our house. I found these green fruit with the sweet flesh almost unpalatable at first. I couldn't understand how anyone could eat them. But over time, as I found different ways to eat them where their taste was disguised by other ingredients, I developed a taste for them so that now I actually enjoy eating them, whether raw or cooked.

They are high in Vitamin C - something I seem to sadly neglect in my diet. It's just what our bodies need as we brace for another winter with all its colds and other ills.

Best of all, we get free fruit for no effort on our part. And I mean: no effort. We do not spray, prune, weed or even water, yet the trees still keep on producing year after year after year. Surely that in itself is something for which to be grateful!