Visit to Fremont
\Fremont is a city in the state of California in USA. We, me and my wife, went there to visit our daughter and her family. Fremont is about 50 miles from San Francisco. We landed in San Francisco (SF) and were picked up by our son-in-law. The drive from SF to Fremont is short and pleasant. As one drives from San Francisco down to Southern parts California one sees greenery all through the way. But the greenery is really luxurious once you reach the residential areas. The houses are all individual bungalows. All have a garage for two cars or one car. There is no neighbourhood market and people take out their vehicle to go to the market even for the smallest requirement. The houses have a front yard and a backyard both full of attractive and soothing greenery. The front yard has, generally, small and large trees. Besides there are bushes of all types. Rose is a favourite flower with almost everybody. I had not seen such large and colorful roses earlier. Not only roses one can see flowers of all hues. Surprisingly bushes and flowers, small and large, and in different colours. Also all the bushes you see, besides being green, also bloom, most houses have green fencing and these are cut to keep them of low height and thus give a beautiful look. Not only small bushes but small trees are also trimmed to give them a rotunda top. Many of these have small or tiny blooms and are very attractive in their front yard. The approach to the house is through greenery only. Many of the houses have large trees in front. In the front yard, as said earlier, the houses have large green trees. There are different types of large trees. One type of tree is a flowering tree. These trees have large size white flowers which look like lotus flowers and are beautiful. I learnt that these trees are of Japanese origin. They are named Magnolia. Summer is the time of their blossoming This reminded me of Cherry blossom festivities in summer time in Washington D.C. I had enjoyed that long time ago but the memories came back fresh reminding of the crowds and the small flowery colourful bushes all over in a very large park near the memorial in Washington D.C. Besides flowers I saw a small common bush/tree in Fremont, that of lemon. The bush is loaded with lemons. Lemons are big size and oblong, of thick skin but very juicy nevertheless. Another bush/tree I noticed in houses in backyards and front yards was that of “loaquat”. This fruit I have seen and eaten in Delhi and in western UP on the way to Haridwar or Dehradoon. For those who might not be familiar with “loaquat”, it is a thin skinned but pulpy, juicy fruit of yellow colour. People there are not familiar with this fruit. The tree is loaded with the fruit with no takers! Our backyard did not have “loaquat” tree but our neighbour’s had and I enjoyed plucking the fruit from the fencing, washing and eating. In our house all, even our guests started enjoying this delicious fruit.. It has good thick juicy pulp, sweet and may be a little sour sometimes. But it is very tasty. We had gone to a friend’ s house (Indian) in Fremont. Their backyard had a very big bush of ‘loaqoat’ had really luxuriant growth but their neighbour, a white local, were completely unaware of this fruit. Unfortunately, I wanted to but could not talk to them, and tell about this fruit I felt very bad that such a nice fruit, became only a decorative, and not able appeal and do its bit! In Freemont most of the houses have in their backyard many varieties of fruit trees and apple and apricot are the most common. Apricot is the other liked fruit. California has large Chinese population and it appeared that Fremont has a fair share. Both our neighbours were Chinese. Besides “loaquat” and other trees they were also growing greens which grew very fast and fine.
