A couple of days after we met,  Darren called me on my cellphone one afternoon. He told me he was walking in his arboretum eating an apple from one of the apple trees in the orchard. I heard him biting into the apple and chewing it as he talked.

I later found out that he has a lot of specimen trees and plants of many types in his arboretum, including  orange and banana trees. Since he lived for years in tropical environments, he continues to plant some of these varieties and tries to keep  them alive.  In the Delaware Valley  where we live, there won’t ever be any edible oranges or bananas growing on the trees since the weather is too cold for too long. But we do see  pretty little oranges growing that are bitter when we bite them.

Here’s a picture of one of his banana trees.