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What's With All the Plums?

We have some dwarf fruit trees in our yard and they usually have a moderate amount of fruit on them.  The cherry tree - birds eat them all; the pear tree - a few small pears that don't get ripe; the apple tree - if I don't put little socks on the apples they usually have apple maggots; the yellow plums - there's usually quite a few of those but they're small and don't get much attention; the little old Italian Prune tree - I love these and pick and eat as many as I can.  This year?  Lots of everything.  I've brought in some pears to try to ripen them up and picked some apples to see what shape they're in.  The Italian prunes aren't quite ripe, but it looks like I'll get some.

The yellow plums are amazing.  There are so many plums on this little tree I don't know how it stands up.  I've been picking them and giving them away for a couple of weeks and today it still looked like no one had picked any.  So I found a local food bank to give a bunch to and spent a couple of hours this afternoon picking them, washing them, throwing the ones that squished after all that attention into the yard waste, and then packing them up.  By the time I was filthy, scratched, and worn out, I had three bags and two 5-gallon buckets full.



When I delivered them, they were weighed and I had brought in 47 pounds of plums.  I feel good about  sharing this bounty with others.  I definitely know that I don't have a future in fruit picking.  I get scared after three steps on the ladder and I don't like all the twigs in my hair. And there are still plums on the tree.

I did pretty well at the Fair.  I'm going back tomorrow morning to demonstrate knitting again and will take a better photo of one of my projects so I can post about it.  I'll get to spend some time looking at the animals tomorrow, too.  I'm looking forward to that.


Comments

Laurie - Our plum tree went bonkers this year too. I ended up picking 335 pounds.....I donated just over 300 pounds to Hopelink in Kirkland and gave away plums to whoever wanted them....

It looks like your yellow plum is the same as ours - our family doesn't really like them - too juicy and sour. Oh well.

Our apples did well too - plenty to share with the kids and have some to put away. We have quite a few mason bees here that I take care of and I was attributing the fruit production to that. We also have a whopping 4 pears.
Z said…
They look delicious!

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