Faith, Folklore, and Friends

I wrote about persimmons  here  a while back, but here is another perspective, surely more accurate than mine,  on  winter predictions using persimmon seed . Or, if you don't trust persimmons,  the trusty  woolly bear caterpillars  might tell you how high the heating bills will run. An infallible guide could be as simple as  watching your cat. I don't know what winter will bring, but here is a prediction I'm pretty sure about: it won't get here until after we have enjoyed October.

  O give thanks unto the  Lord ; for he is  good; for his mercy endureth for ever. ~1 Chronicles 16:34

No one has to tell a child not to eat unripe persimmons twice. Once a child takes a bite of a green one, the memory stays with him forever. It's that bad. I speak from experience. We hunted them, however, because we wanted to see what was inside the seed. The seed, when opened, could reveal a knife, fork, or spoon. We spent hours opening persimmon seed. My sister's husband was from Maine, and when he first came to the South, he thought this search for persimmon cutlery was the weirdest thing we did. Some say that persimmons  can predict the coming winter. Some use them to make a tasty  pudding . Some say they are the favorite food of opossums, and if you wanted to hunt a 'possum, you would look for them in a persimmon tree. Personally, the best thing about them is how beautiful the orange globes look against the late fall sky.

No one has to tell a child not to eat unripe persimmons twice. Once a child takes a bite of a green one, the memory stays with him forever. It's that bad. I speak from experience. We hunted them, however, because we wanted to see what was inside the seed. The seed, when opened, could reveal a knife, fork, or spoon. We spent hours opening persimmon seed. My sister's husband was from Maine, and when he first came to the South, he thought this search for persimmon cutlery was the weirdest thing we did. Astringent persimmons are common in the eastern United States. Back in the day, people who hunted opossums for food or sport or just because they were mad at them for getting in the chicken pen, looked for persimmon trees. Opossums loved the fruit and could often be found hiding in the trees. This could be used as a measure of their intelligence, since the trees were completely bare of leaves by the time the persimmons were ripe.* There were some families who cooked opossu...