If you prefer your fruit cold or canned, I can’t help you, and there’s nothing for you to see here, so click or scroll away to something more satisfying. But before you go, in the name of the goddess Pomona and all that is botanically holy, take those bananas out of the refrigerator—and the tomatoes, for crying out loud, if you’ve stashed them there. No tomatoes in the fridge. Ever.
Where
was I?
Peaches.
I have a peach tree. I didn’t plant it. It was here when I moved in. How lucky
am I? And I dare say, on far more than one occasion, I have been blessed to
find the perfect peach.
When
I’m picking, I search only for ripeness. If the fruit, ever so gently impressed
by my thumb, gives way, the globe is plucked.
A
sharp knife will glide through such a peach, the two halves falling away from
each other as if relieved at their release. A slight tug, and the skin, thin as
a gossamer veil, will lift away, leaving the pale flesh exposed and inviting.
Oh, man! Nothing like fresh fruit. We used to have a wolf river apple tree in back that would produce good apples (albeit, better for pies.) We have a couple apple trees now but the apples they bare are better pie apples. :/ BUT! My favorite story about fresh fruit is this. The summer after I was in fourth grade, we took a big western driving trip. We went to a lot of awesome places, the Badlands, the Columbia river gorge, the Pacific ocean, boulder hot springs, etc. We also went to a woman's house who used to work with my dad at the station. She lived in the shadow of mount rainier... Well, when we got there all her Mount Rainier cherry trees were coming ripe. She had a ladder so that we could go up and pick them right off the tree. OMG... The best fruit ever! They were bursting with flavor, so juicy and sweet! I could have eaten those until they were coming out my ears!
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, fresh fruit is the best. MMMMMMMM
Thanks for the post, and reminding me of those cherries!
Love you! :) <3
Scott
Scott, I couldn't agree more heartily about Mt. Rainier cherries! They're the best! I had never heard of them until a couple summers ago. A friend bought a bag and shared them with me. Oh my goodness! She said, "Once you've had a Rainier cherry, nothing else will be good enough." Well, I don't know about all that--I do love fresh cherries. But those Mt. Rainier cherries will always be the best. Thanks for sharing!
DeleteLove you!
Lovely, Kay. We have an old peach planted before we lived here, by Kath's dad. It gave us chin-dripping peached for a long time, but now the tree is so old the peaches never ripen, are hard as rocks when they should be rips. So I'll have to imagine eating from your tree, if I can sneak one from the counter or from a branch into my imagination.
ReplyDeleteArt, that's the trouble with fruit trees; they only last 20-30 years, and then they slowly diminish. Most people become so sentimentally attached to their old trees (as I would), they don't remove them and start over. Starting over is always challenging, isn't it? In all things....
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