It's Cherry Time

First fruits of our cherry tree!!  So excited that we got them before the birds did.  They always seem to beat us to them.  


When John brought them in yesterday, Father's day.  I saw how perfect they were, with out a blemish or bird peck and it reminded me of my dad.

He had a great big cherry tree in our backyard, along with numerous other fruit trees, and a garden that took up most of the back yard.  The front was filled with his roses and flowers, mostly roses, he loved roses and has two rose gardens on either side of the front steps leading up to the front door of our Cape style house.  They were fragrant and so big and beautiful. My favorites were the peace roses, they were a multi color of yellows and pinks and different hughes.  

But I digress, I started out talking about the cherry tree.  Yes, the cherry tree, and if my father was not so dilligent about keeping them out of the tree they would have feasted on every last one and we would not have had our fresh cherries and he would not have been able to make his jars of Cherries in Brandy that lined the upper shelf of his wine cellar.

My dad was very clever and he always stayed one step ahead of the birds.  He would cut out a section of the top of old bleach bottles and rig a wooden spoon in it somehow and then he would place them strategically in the hugh cherry tree.  They would be tied to a string and that string lead to one of the windows in the living room where he would tug on the string every so often and the birds wood fly out of the tree.

I always got a kick at the various ways he kept the birds out of the fruit trees and the animals out of the garden.   But he was good at it because we always had a bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables.

When my parents moved to Texas, daddy planted an olive tree and of course a big beautiful grape arbor as well as more fruit trees and a garden, a bit smaller than the one in new england but a bountiful one just the same.

I guess you could say we got a little of his green thumb, my siblings and I all love our gardens, flowers, vegetables and fruit trees and we have them to varying degrees, but it is my sister Anna that definately got his green thumb and his love for working in the garden.

I am blessed to have married a wonderful man who also likes to garden and who is good at it.  We have not had much luck with the cherries the past few years.  John had to cut off one of the branches of our cherry tree the year before last it seemed to be dead, attacked by ant.  Now the tree is growing back stronger and fuller.  And John has taken some mesures to keep the ants from climbing the tree and eating the leaves.  And with these few cherries, little gems from our tree, it looks like we may be in for a good cherry season this year!  

We love them, so we can't wait!!

And we harvest enough, we will even make some cherries in brandy too!