We have in our front yard these two, rather entwined, plum trees.<\/p>\n
We planted them as itty bitty little sticks 6 years ago when we bought the house. They were a gift from one of Kaddee’s co-workers.<\/p>\n
Last year, much to our surprise we got many beautiful plums. They are small “italian plums”. Two bite, free-stone. Very juicy.<\/p>\n
I say “to our surprise” because we didn’t really pay any attention to the tree, because we weren’t expecting fruit.<\/p>\n
This fall, we pruned it back.<\/p>\n
This spring, we noticed that we had HUNDREDS <\/strong>of plums, not counting the dozens that have fallen before they were ripe, or those countless that were eaten by the birds and squirrels.<\/p>\n As I look out at the tree, the plums are almost <\/em>ripe. They are very very close. We can almost <\/em>taste them. They are almost <\/em>the right shade of purple. They are almost <\/em>soft enough to eat.<\/p>\n They sit on the tree, tantalizingly close. They are a light shade of purple. They smell wonderful. They are perfiectly shaped. The skins are unbruised. They taunt me.<\/p>\n I see them every morning on my way to work. I examine the tree to see if any are ready. I talk to the tree and the fruit, offering encouragement. “Time to rise and shine! Grow strong. We want just one plum each before we go.”<\/p>\n Every night when I come home, I examine the tree and the fruit. I whisper to it “time to rest for the night so that you can grow strong tomorrow. Sleep well.” If not, the tree will be standing 2 years hence.<\/p>\n If we time our return just right, I hope to open the gate and pluck a plum from the tree, close my eyes and taste the flavors of home.<\/p>\n Now, if you will excuse me, I must go whisper to my tree..<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: We have plums. Dozens! They drop from the tree, ripe and delicious.<\/p>\n We have eaten our fill. Feel free to come by and take a handful and taste what we call home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We have in our front yard these two, rather entwined, plum trees. We planted them as itty bitty little sticks 6 years ago when we bought the house. They were a gift from one of Kaddee’s co-workers. Last year, much to our surprise we got many beautiful plums. They are small “italian plums”. Two bite, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-prep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI refer to this as “the race for the plums.” We hope to win the race, insh’allah.<\/p>\n