Seriously, what a silly prompt! Right? Does anyone actually care what anyone’s five favorite fruits are? Like, how is that supposed to make you want to read my blog (which is, after all, the purpose of this whole “daily prompts” thing, isn’t it?)? I would bet a substantial amount of money that no one, not one single soul out there in the world, will see a link to “Mith’s Top 5 Favorite Fruits” and go “oh wow, hot damn! I gotta know immediately! What are Mith’s top five favorite fruits?! I don’t even know who Mith is, but what fruit does she like?!” Literally, unless it’s someone you’re madly in love with, or your own child, or maybe your BFF or your mom or something, I cannot imagine anyone really caring about what some someone’s top five favorite fruits are.

“So what.” That is one of the big ideas that got drilled into my head, back when I was a Writing major in college. “So what? Why are you telling me this?” is always in the back of my mind when I’m writing anything, or saying anything, to anyone. Which, combined with my AvPD, makes communicating with a person pretty stressful. When speaking, I often find myself trying to abbreviate my thoughts and phrases to get to the point already. Make it relevant. No one cares about my personal thoughts and feelings! “If you want to just write about your little thoughts and feelings, get a diary and tuck it under your pillow,” my favorite writing professor said, condescendingly.

So, I keep most things to myself; sometimes to a fault.

But, hell! Right? This is my personal blog! I can post what I want! No one reads it anyway! I may as well! – but still; I cannot stand to just post “here’s my favorite xyz” without trying to make it meaningful or significant in some way, or like something that I think/hope might potentially be mildly interesting to someone who doesn’t know me. So, instead of just “the top five yummy fruits that I like to eat” (because that’s so third grade), I’m going to list the “top five most meaningful and inspiring fruits for me as a wannabe writer.” Which is still pretty silly and personal and probably no one gives a single iota of shit, but hey!, at least it makes for a slightly more in-depth and engaging discussion than just “mm I liek banana cuz it taste good.”

And I know a lot of us on here on wordpress are writers or wannabe writers, so maybe this little concept will resonate with some of you. Does anyone else find inspiration in little things, like fruit, sometimes, or is it just me? If anyone cares to join me in this game, let me know!

ETA: One fruit has been removed from this list for personal reasons.

So without further ado:

5. Peach. Obvious generic choice, for someone from the American South: but, it gets more personal. In my childhood hometown, which btw is a very scenic and beautiful place (and which has, unfortunately, in the last couple of decades, become very self-aware about what a scenic and beautiful little small town it is, and is becoming increasingly bougie, overpopulated, and overdeveloped, thereby sacrificing its authenticity, but that’s a whole ‘nother story), there is this peach orchard. This peach orchard is probably one of the most beautiful places in the whole world, IMO, if not the single most beautiful. Especially in early spring when the peach trees bloom: a delicious shade of bright pinkish violet. You drive around a curve in this wooded, windy, rural road, and the forest clears and then the orchard opens up before you, sprawled out over the rolling hills: just fields and fields of these pinkish-violet trees, surrounded by farmland, and off in the distance, the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s the kind of place that makes you homesick for the place while you’re already there. The kind of landscape that you just want to kind of lay down on and melt into, to really be a part of it. It’s my favorite. This is a location that I’ve fictionalized and worked into numerous stories and books. It’s kind of central to my little fictional world. And over the years, I’ve always gone there, often solo but sometimes with family, to celebrate personally-significant days. It’s something of a tradition. And but so peaches, in general, always remind me of this place and give me a little mood boost.

4 and a half. Cranberry. The quintessential Christmas and Thanksgiving fruit, i.e. the official fruit of my the most wonderful time of the year. I couldn’t not throw it in here, because, as you know if you read this blog (which no one does, lol), I’m an absolute simp for Christmas. It always makes me want to write new stuff, and is one of my most productive times of the year, writing-wise. And especially holiday baking. I’m not much of a baker myself, I prefer watching it on TV and reading about it to actually doing it; but one thing I make just about every year is a cranberry-pumpkin-nut quick bread with orange zest. So the mere mention of cranberries gives me a little shot of inspiration any time of the year.

4. Apple. Again, this one’s a bit of a personal nostalgia thing. When I was a little child (like four onwards), my family made an annual fall pilgrimage to this apple orchard in the city near our home. I say “city” because it was technically in that city’s postal code, but this was a rural area, up on a mountain. Typical fall family stuff: we’d go for a hay ride, pick apples, eat donuts and drink hot cider (this was back in the day when fall days were cold), and buy a pumpkin. And so apple orchards also have a special place in my little heart. My dream house has always been an old white farmhouse adjoining an apple orchard. Also because apples are basically the perfect fruit. I know I said I wasn’t going to ramble about my little personal flavor preferences, here, because that’s stupid and uninteresting, but, if I could only eat one fruit for the rest of my life, it would 100% be apples. Like eggs, hummus, and peanut butter, they’re just one of those naturally perfect foods.

3. Blackberry. Are you tired of me rambling about my childhood yet? (“So what! What’s the point,” my professor is screaming at me in my head right now! Aah!) Anyway, real quick: I grew up in a literal log cabin on a little dirt road in the woods, and said cabin was surrounded by wild blackberry bushes. I’d pick and eat them all the time, sometimes so many that I’d make myself sick! And in late summer my Mom would pick all of these blackberries and make jars and jars of homemade jelly. The really cool thing was, instead of using the store-bought pectin, she’d use underripe green apples from the little baby apple tree in our backyard (which tree is, in itself, a whole ‘nother story, but anyway); did you know that tiny unripe apples are rich in pectin? So the smell of blackberries and sour green apples and sugar is like the smell of my childhood summers. Also, another anecdote: blackberries were like the signature fruit at one of the little casual-dining restaurants off the Parkway where my family would stop sometimes on our little family outings. They did a really cool blackberry ice cream. Thus, blackberries are one of the fruits that sing to my heart the most.

2. Blackcurrant. What an underrated fruit! What a thing of beauty! I didn’t discover blackcurrant until traveling to Europe for the first time, a trip to Ireland in ‘07. They like to flavor things with blackcurrant over there. It’s such a different flavor from any of our typical American fruity flavors. So dark and alluring and mystical. I got rather hooked on it, especially in drinks and beverages, but also in spreads (my favorite Irish food?: brown soda bread with blackcurrant jam in the morning, what a happy memory). In Germany, you see a lot of “forest fruits”-flavored desserts and spreads, which usually feature blackcurrant, and being obsessed with the Black Forest region and all its fairytale associations, this is another flavor that brings me inspiration. Cassis (what a fun word, too) is also one of the fragrance elements is my all-time favorite perfume, which has sadly been discontinued; and it’s the signature scent of one of my favorite fictional characters I’ve created.

And finally:

1. Fig. Another underrated gem of the produce world. Did you know they’re not actually a fruit, but a syconium, i.e. an inside-out bouquet of flowers? And that, in the wild, figs actually ingest wasps? They’re one of the most interesting “fruits” out there, for sure. I first got into figs when, in 2010-11, dried figs mysteriously became one of my daily “safe” foods during a restrictive phase of my ED. For a long time, figs were my go-to thing. Then later, around the time of my conversion, I learned about the legend associated with Saint Rita, to whom I developed my first devotion. My obsession with them might also be related to the word “figment,” as in “a figment of your imagination,” which word/phrase has always been pretty personally meaningful to me. Anyway, I’ve featured figs in at least one or two of my major fiction projects, because they’re just so freaking cool. Maybe I’m a dork for thinking figs are “freaking cool,” but, so be it.

I hope this has been at least mildly interesting for you, lol.