Cherry-picking

Did you know you can actually watch cherries ripen? Yep, it's a fact, borne out by the way I can circle my small tree, plucking off 1/2-inch tart cherries and when I get back to where I started, I find more ready to pick! They must have ripened as I circled!

It is a bit disconcerting to think I've picked all ripe ones within reach and then get to the other side of the tree and look back over to where I've been--and there are more ripe ones! I think they're hiding under small leaves. Whatever.

I picked a quart of these babies this morning. A QUART! I've already picked a quart and there are more out there! I might have enough for a batch of cherry jelly this summer rather than waiting 2 or 3 years for them to accumulate in the freezer.

On the other hand, the thing that really does concern me is that these are ripening 3-4 weeks earlier than normal. I usually pick Memorial Day weekend, not Mother's Day. I wonder if this means anything for the fruit harvest around here.

My poor plum tree bloomed its 25-year-old heart out and then the wind and cool temps got hold of it and there are very few plums. Well, to be honest, I've only seen one.

But it's going to be a beauty!

A Plum Sight

The fruit tree gods smiled this spring. And smiled. And then had a good laugh.

Our springs are usually rife with hope and anxiety. It's cold enough in the winter to kill what we hope are a sufficient number of bugs and then it starts to warm up. Everything blooms and then it gets freezing cold and half of the crop, if not all, is frozen away. This particularly affects peaches probably because they are everyone's favorite.

But this spring we didn't have a killing late freeze. We had rain and sun and bloom, bloom, bloom. This worked to my advantage with the little cherry tree which gave over 2 gallons of itty-bitty fruit which I have frozen and will juice into jelly later this summer. It usually takes me 2-3 summers to have enough to do that.

Alas, it also worked to advantage--someone's--with our poor plum tree.

It is an orchard plum, a Morris. It shouldn't still be alive after 27 years, especially given its twisted trunk and wayward limbs. Seeing how much fruit it could potentially bear, and knowing that it would be little in size, we lopped off a few weak branches and shook the tree every time we passed it.

I have never seen it so laden with fruit. One limb has broken and another has bent to the ground. The fruit is little and if I'm not quick to confiscate it, the mockingbirds are sampling or it is rotting on its own. I have 2 gallons of juice in the freezer and the tree is still loaded with fruit.

I have offered to share and been turned down by people whose own plum trees are in similar circumstances. The only advantage to the fruit which falls to the ground is that it feeds a myriad of butterflies.

I wonder if this is the plum tree's swan song, but then, I've thought that before. I don't really even like plums, as a fruit to eat out of hand, so I think it lives on to spite me.

Plum awful!

In March 1983, my neighbor's son-in-law, the owner of a peach orchard and the holder of a doctoral degree in (I think) agricultural economics, planted two Texas-approved Morris plum trees for us. One went in a sunny spot by the driveway, in full view of God and everyone. This one, he graciously kept pruned for us as an orchard plum through at least half of its life. The other was hidden behind our north-facing garage and allowed to grow at will. When it died, seemingly of a frigid winter when the cold air "stacked up" behind the garage, it was nearly twenty feet tall.

They were both good producers of plums. Having the crop cut in half with the death of one did not bother me; plums are not my favorite fruit to eat out of hand. I do love to make jelly from them however and they mix delightfully with other fruits I may be putting by in a jar.

Over the course of its life, our surviving plum has met with several disasters: we backed a trailer into it; the house next door caught fire and scorched its fingertips; the hackberry beside it blew over in a thunderstorm and, in pushing it out of the street, the city crews pushed down the fence which had no where else to go except into our plum. Its trunk is twisted in a most artistic way and its branches are now mis-shapen and all over each other. Last year it bore no fruit whatsoever, instead deciding to leak sap and appear on its last roots. This year, it is loaded with fruit, some branches touching the ground.

This is one stubborn plum tree. I think it hates me and is determined to gasp along and surprise me at every turn. As I will not be outdone, I set out to harvest this morning. Of course, the birds have beaten me to the punch and placed a neat little beak-shaped jab in at least 1 out of every 4 plums. And then the tree (on second thought I know it hates me) has put all its biggest plums in its top branches. There they hang, way out of reach unless I get a ladder or get brave and climb it.

Sneaky tree, thinking to lure me up where it can break and toss me to the ground. No way. If I could only point the birds to the top, then we could all be happy: me, the birds, and the tree.