Reflections on the First Week of Summer – What’s a country girl do on the first day of summer?

4-18-09 Dwarf North Star Cherry and Four Other New Trees

What’s a country girl do on the first day of summer?

Pit cherries.

 

She pits cherries that took nine years to grow.

On April 18, 2009, a sunny Saturday, a catbird sang while my husband Spence and I lugged a shovel, post hole digger, bone meal, and a package from Miller’s Nursery containing five fruit trees. After setting the load behind our new Wells Wood garage, we ripped the paper off two Dwarf North Star cherry trees, two Black Gold cherry trees, and a Moorpark apricot like the one in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.

Spence dug.

The post hole digger scraped against rocks and released the aroma of fresh earth.

I knelt, reached into the hole, and formed a pyramid of soil to support the tree’s bare roots. “I’m going to bake a cherry pie with the North Star cherries,” I said sprinkling bone meal.

Spence shoveled in composted horse manure. “You’ll have to wait five years.”

He had a point. The plants looked more like sticks for roasting hot dogs than trees ready to bear fruit. While I filled the holes, I broke up clumps of soil, tossed stones to the gravel driveway behind the garage, and figured, with luck, I might bake a pie when I retired in four years.

No luck.

By 2013, cold winters, nibbling deer, and infestations of insects and worms killed the sweet cherries and the apricot. The sour cherries struggled to survive. Spence planted a Montmorency cherry tree in place of the dead apricot and put the Dwarf North Star trees on life support.

• He pruned branches like a beaver gathering sticks for a dam.
• He sprayed BT on tent worms.
• He sprayed Serenade to battle fungus.
• And he sprayed Neem oil then Spinosad to control other insects.

Holding the sprayer in one hand, he pointed to the smaller Dwarf North Star with the other hand and said, “This is my favorite tree. I saved it when it gasped its death rattle.” 

Okay. I had three surviving cherry trees. I’d have cherry pie the year after I retired.

In April 2014 and during the following two Aprils, cherry trees sported white flowers with a light, sweet, fruity scent. But before the trees set fruit, a killing frost nipped every chance for a cherry season after season. 

No luck.

4-21-17 Dwarf North Star Cherry Blossoms

In April 2017, the cherry trees bore so many blossoms they rivaled the display in Washington D.C. Frosts held off until the fruits set―a promise of many cherries.

On walks, I circled the cherry trees. Giggling, I rubbed my tummy and visualized a crisscross crust atop a bubbling cherry pie.

“Something’s eating the cherries,” Spence said during dinner one June evening, “and they’re still green.”

I carried the dishes to the sink, dunked my hands in soapy water, and gazed out the window. Our Norway spruce blocked the view of the North Star trees, but I saw robins flapping on the branches of the Montmorency cherry. Sheesh. With their beaks, they didn’t need to wait for the cherries to ripen.

No luck.

This year, a cold April postponed cherry blossoms, and Spence tried a new tactic―protect the green cherries with cover cloth.

On windy June 14, we lugged cover cloth, scissors, plastic ties, and bull clips to the cherry trees.

“Take that end.” Spence held one end of a seven by thirty foot piece of cover cloth and pointed to the other hand. “Walk around the tree with it.”

“Shouldn’t we put it on top of the tree not around?” I muttered but picked up the opposite end of the cloth and walked to the other side of the Montmorency cherry.

“That’s it. Stop a hundred eighty degrees from me.” He grinned, and the cloth billowed in the wind. “Now lift.”

We lifted, the wind changed directions, and the cloth stuck against the side branches.

“If I had a pole . . .” I picked up a two foot garden stake.

Dropping his end of the cloth, Spence stepped to the old tomato patch, disconnected a five foot section of PVC pipe, and walked back. “Use this.”

Cloth in my right hand and the pole in my left, I poked the middle of the cloth with the pole.

Spence said “Lift.”

I lifted both hands. The wind billowed the cloth, and I pole-steered the floating cloth to the tree’s apex. I didn’t sing ta-da.

The cloth looked like the stripe down a skunk’s back―too narrow. Besides, the ends flapped like a great blue heron at take off. We pulled the cloth off the tree.

“We can weigh the ends with short garden stakes.” Spence bent to pick up the stake I’d rejected for lifting.

“And we can tie on a second section to widen the cloth.” I spread cover cloth on the ground and cut a second section the same size.

On hands and knees, we attached the second cloth and the garden stakes with plastic ties. Maneuvering to get the wind at our backs, we hoisted and pole-lifted the adjusted cloth until the center seam lay across the tree’s apex. Then we clamped the edges of the cloth around the branches and moved onto the Dwarf North Star Cherries.  

An hour later, I chuckled and picked up the supplies. “They look like lollipops,” I said and handed the lifting pole to Spence.

“Or ghosts.” He tossed the pole toward the old tomato patch.

The lollipop covers worked―not counting the head shake our son Charlie made when he pulled into the driveway and stared at the covered trees. Did he contemplate texting his sister about their parents’ latest fiasco? I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.

Cherries ripened.

Wearing long sleeves, a garden hat, and tick spray, I ducked under the cover cloth two days before summer solstice. Cherry branches knocked my hat off―fine for the Montmorency cherry wrap which towered several feet over my head but worrisome inside the shorter Dwarf North Star wrap. Wasps, bumblebees, and a variety of black bugs buzzed six inches above my hair in a vain attempt to escape through the top. I didn’t help them out the bottom. Butt tight against the cover cloth and tummy sucked to its minimum, I waded through the knee-high weeds that Spence couldn’t cut because his hand mower broke―again. Cherries plinked into the metal picking bucket.

While I finished picking in the third tree―the tightest wrap but tall enough to keep the hovering bugs at a comfortable distance―Spence drove his tractor into the garage. He walked me back to the log house and said, “It really does look like a ghost when someone’s in there. It moves.”

So on the first day of summer, I pitted the plateful of cherries I’d harvested from Wells Wood trees. During the tedious task of cutting around the pit with the tip of a paring knife, twisting the cherry to separate the halves, and flicking out the pit with the knife tip, I contemplated buying a pitter. Tiny white worms in three cherries changed my mind. I preferred to inspect the insides of anything I put in my mouth. I set the cherries, that passed my visual test, in rows and columns on a tray from a long dead toaster oven then shoved all but one of the cherry halves into the freezer. I popped that last half cherry into my mouth for an almost-as-sour-as-lemon sensation with just a hint of a sweet cherry flavor. Great for a pie.

I pitted a second plateful two days later. If the rain stops long enough so I can pick a third plateful of cherries, I’ll have enough to bake the pie I dreamed about nine years ago.

6-19-18 Covered Cherry Trees