Wild Cherries

Near our house are three wild cherry trees.  EG and I have been enjoying picking and snacking on them.  I’m planning on making a Black Cherry Conserve with them.  We can’t get enough.

Yet every time someone sees us eating them and asks if they are edible I get quite strong reactions once they try them.  The taste is a bit on the bitter side.  Someone compared it to a chocolate stout beer, a very robust and unique flavor. Most folks, generally the American born and raised folks, scrunch up their faces and decide to pass on eating anymore.    But a fair number of folks on our neighborhood were born and raised internationally and most of them are as enchanted with the cherries as we are.  Many of them have fond memories of similar cherry trees in their home countries.  I find the contrast in reactions quite striking.  Confirms for me that Americans, in general, have far too much of a sweet tooth.  I have been working on removing the processed sugar from my family’s diet.  We don’t eat a lot of sweets, the only candy is very dark chocolate, and anything I bake I sweeten with honey rather than white sugar. We still enjoy some Ben & Jerry’s now and again.  But I am pleased that EG is able to enjoy these less than sweet cherries.  Makes me proud that she has not gone the way of the typical american sweet tooth.

Climbing Figs

Our fruit trees having been bearing like crazy for the last month or so.  Once the weather begins to warm, our eyes are always scanning the trees for the ripening fruit – mulberries, service berries, cherries.  With such sweet motivation, EG has become quite interested in climbing trees.  The picture above is her first attempt at climbing in a service berry tree.  I’ve told her I won’t help her get up into a tree because she needs to be able to figure it out herself.  If she can’t get into herself, she can’t climb it.  With the berries calling her name, she usually finds a way!

This past week some figs have started coming ripe.  It just feels wrong to eat fresh figs in May, but not so wrong we aren’t up there in the trees grabbing all we can.  The ripe ones right now are way up in the canopy of the trees.  I’m rediscovering how much fun it is to climb trees.  EG and I are like a couple of monkeys chasing each other up the limbs after the best fruit!

Still, some of the fruit is just beyond reach.  HB has been working on a fig picker for us.  So far we’ve only been able to knock down the ones out of reach which results in a few bruises, but no less sweet of a fig.  But she’s working on a system that will knock loose and catch the fig.

Giving Thanks for a Real Tree

As a part of our Thanksgiving celebration, HB and I took Baby Grace to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree.  Before we got together, HB was accustomed to using an artificial tree while I liked having a real tree.  Our first year together we got a real tree, but agreed that we would alternate years between the two.  So, the next year, I kept to the agreement and went about setting up and decorating the artificial tree.  After I finished, I sat down to admire the tree but began sobbing instead.  It just wasn’t the same.  I missed the smell of the pine, the sticky feeling of sap on my hands, the freshness in the air from bringing the greenery inside, even having to vacuum the trail of pine needles left on the floor.  HB suggested we could go out and get a real tree, but I agreed to stick it out with this tree and see how I felt.  We’ve had a real tree ever since.

Taking Baby Grace to get our tree this year was a lot of fun.  She ran through the rows of trees playing hide and seek with us.  She held the saw with one hand as I cut the trunk.  She laughed at the wind blowing in her hair while we took a hay ride around the farm.  It reminded me of going to a tree farm when I was a kid and cutting down our tree.  Even just going to the tree lot and choosing a precut tree was a much anticipated experience as my sisters and I carefully inspected the trees for the best and tallest tree we could find.  After leaving for college, I always asked my mom to wait until I got home so I could help choose the tree.

There’s just something about a real tree that makes a home feel more warm and inviting.  A little bit of green and life when the world outside is becoming cold and stark.

Junior Chef

I had a very enthusiastic helper in the kitchen last night!  We made cornbread using some corn meal from Logan Turnpike Meal in North Georgia.  Baby Grace helped me pull out all the ingredients from the fridge.  Then, as I added the ingredients to the bowl, she stirred them all together.  She took her job very seriously and was quite disturbed if I tried to help.  It was great to engage her in my work rather than try to keep one eye on her and one eye on dinner.  And she gained so much satisfaction from helping.  She didn’t so much appreciate my taking “her work” away to put it in the oven!

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