This beauty is one of the last few mangoes of our 2013 crop from the two large old trees in the back yard of the house in Kahala where my parents lived for 70 years or so. I still think of it as my parents’ home, although they are both gone now.

There are two trees. One, a White Bombay Pirie, was planted when my sister, Bonnie, was born. I don’t think there were any fruit on the pirie this year.

But the Haden mango planted when I was born–making it “my tree,” of course–produced a nice crop. A couple of months ago, there were lots of mangoes to be given away. But by September, there were only a few left.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been carefully examining the remaining mangoes almost every day and picking them as they got close to being fully ripe. My tree has produced delicious fruit to the very end.

Our very last mango of 2013 made some birds very happy. It seemed a little short of fully ripe, and I decided to give it one more day on the tree before harvesting. Wrong decision from the people’s point of view, a great decision from the birds point of view.

I don’t think it made any difference to the tree.

One thing has changed since I wrote about the trees back in May. At that time, the future of the house was up in the air and we worried about what would happen to the trees.

But the situation has evolved since then. Meda and I now own the house on Kealaolu. My sister, who is still living there, is in the process of moving to a condominium apartment on the Ala Wai.

So responsibility for the trees now rests with us. We’ve already had our friend and arborist, Dudley Hulbert, look them over and give us some advice. It will be a learning curve with its own unique edible rewards.

Stay tuned.