I haven’t been able to get out of the office very much lately as work has been insanely busy. But I had to step out on Wednesday just to keep my sanity. I only went around the block, but I decided to pay a visit to the kousa dogwood I found early this summer. The fruit was ripe!

Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa)

Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa)


I plucked one off and examined it. Then bit it open. Here it is:
Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa)

Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa)


The texture of the flesh reminded me a lot of pawpaw, but I would imagine that description is not terribly helpful to most people, as pawpaws are not commonly eaten. Maybe mango. The taste was rather like a peach though. Nice and sweet. Unfortunately, the skins are kind of bitter, so that if you get any of that, it almost ruins everything.

I picked about a dozen fruits and brought them back to the office. I had a plastic container there in which I had previously transported some soup. I had eaten the soup for lunch and had washed out the container, so it was perfect. I was intending to do something with them when I got home, but all I managed was to pop them into the fridge.

I intended to do something with them on Thursday too, but that didn’t happen either. But tonight… yes. I ran them through my chinois in an attempt to separate the pulp from the skin and seeds. It mostly worked, but some of the skin did make it through.

I ate the pulp with a spoon, but didn’t offer any to Beth or David (I know Va well enough to know that she would have refused). Since it still had some bitterness in it, I didn’t want them to dismiss it permanently. I’m hoping the day will come when I figure out how to make this stuff irresistible.

In other news…
My canoe is almost ready to go again. All I have to do is let the varnish dry. Well… I’ll have to touch up the gunwales too. I varnished them with the boat upside down, and couldn’t reach the part of the gunwales that was sitting on the sawhorses.

The way I dealt with the bubbles in the fiberglass was by sanding them off and patching them over with small bits of fiberglass cloth (and more epoxy). That worked out pretty well. Once I got the patches sanded down, it was pretty hard to tell where they were.

The varnish instructions said to not use the product unless the temperature was between 50-90F. It’s supposed to get down to 48 tonight, but I did the deed in the garage. I’ve closed the door and left on the lights (about 260 watts total), so I’m thinking it should stay at least 2 degrees warmer in there vs outside. I’m not worried about it.

With any luck, I’ll take it for a cruise tomorrow.