A Walking Tour of Public Fruit

Friday morning's Santa Fe Radio Café featured the artists of Fallen Fruit, visiting from Los Angeles. They're working a project where they're mapping "public fruit" in Silver Lake — fruit trees that are either on public land, or on private land but where the fruit is accessible from a public space (ie: overhanging a sidewalk). Fallen Fruit (Dave, Matias, and Austin) had been invited by the College of Santa Fe to give a presentation, and also to lead a project mapping public fruit in Santa Fe. They're working with a local artist in the Second Street area who already collects public fruit in the neighborhood. We couldn't make their talk on Friday, but planned on heading out Sunday morning for the mapping project.

The gathering place was Cloud Cliff. We got there a bit before the 11:00 meeting time for some breakfast, then found the group and visited outside.



When all was said and done, there were about a dozen of us (+ 1 dog), artists, naturalists, and interested folks. Our local guide took us along the rail path, just to show us what a great place it would be for fruit trees; as we headed into the neighborhoods, we passed The Lost Toilet Graveyard:



Pretty quickly, we happened upon a whole bunch of trees that stuck out into the sidewalks — mostly apple, crabapple, and apricot, but a few assorted berry bushes. We strolled the neighborhoods, identified plants by committee, photographed them, and recorded their locations.



(Click for larger versions)





Austin and Dave; Matias and one of the locals (click for larger versions):



Smelling a dried apple: [It smelled like bread! —Monica]



We were out for about an hour-and-a-half, in beautiful weather. We covered 7 or so blocks, and logged 42 trees — not quite the density found in Los Angeles, but a pretty amazing number, I thought, especially considering the arid climate. Fallen Fruit is going to be compiling the maps and eventually posting it on their Web site.