The Olive Allée

We have been occupied with making orange marmalade.

In addition, Dennis has been busy cleaning bricks. He has cleaned so many bricks he has worn out a pair of Kevlar gloves and had to buy a new pair.

We made our last batch of orange marmalade this afternoon, which frees me to write about the wonderful olive-lined allée on the University of Arizona campus.

How long these trees have been here I don’t know, but they are venerable to me for their gnarled trunks.

Seeing these old, old trees immediately triggered a memory of hearing a news report of Israeli Army’s bulldozers tearing up an ancient olive grove in the Palestine Territory. Over the years this practice has been a holocaust for more than 1.2 million olive trees, the destruction of a Palestinian heritage and a major source of revenue for that beleaguered people.

On a lighter note, when I first came to Tucson and learned that olives are not harvested here, although olive trees abound, I wanted to harvest them. Then I researched how to cure olives, a long, involved process requiring not only patience, but also equipment and heavy lifting. Curing olives is not for an 80-year-old, disabled woman, but still I would love to try. Letting such valuable resources go to waste would amaze and disgust Palestinian people, I imagine.

Dennis plucked these olives from one of the trees. I felt guilty throwing them away.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer