The weather forecast on the evening of May 14th was not good: temperatures predicted to drop into the mid-20s. My tart cherry trees—in their second season—were in full bloom for the first time! What to do?!?!

I got out a hose and a fine spray nozzle and left a small amount of water running all night. I knew, even if the water froze, it could potentially keep the blossoms from being killed. This is what the tree looked like at 6:00AM on May 15th:

But by noon the ice had melted and most of the blossoms were looking good and being well pollinated by insects. Amazing.

This was what I picked two days ago from one of the trees (Stella), just a few steps ahead of the many hungry birds in the yard:

Life can be a bowl of cherries! Yes, it was the entire first crop but I was grinning ear to ear! The other tree, a later variety, will be another week or two in the ripening.

The only thing better than a bowl of cherries is two of them, with ice cream, and shared with my sweetie. What an amazing gift life can be!

05 Jul This entry was published on July 5, 2013 at 8:59 pm. It’s filed under Flowers, Garden, Ice, Summer and tagged cherries. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.