Cherry Pie Bribe

My brother has a few fruit trees. This may not be remarkable in many parts of the country. In western South Dakota, growing tree fruits is a risky venture. Hail is very common, and he once experienced an hour of baseball sized hail in one storm. Small hail can easily wipe out an entire fruit crop, but that kind of hail strips trees of their branches. But if nature is kind, the bright sun, clear air, and cool night temperatures result in fruit that is more tantalizingly fragrant and flavorful than any I have tasted.  

Alan and his wife Heidi had to work late when I came down to do laundry.  They've been very busy at the mill and the ripening sour cherries were left unpicked, to be enjoyed by the birds. I think there's something primeval in shiny red fruit that pleads for humans to pick and eat, and Forest and I could not resist. We got enough from this tree to make a pie. The Wheat Montana™ flour and butter found in Heidi's kitchen were a great start for a rich, flaky crust, and because of the dry weather, the cherries had a very concentrated flavor and richness that can't be found in canned pie filling. The pie was a big hit following Heidi's enchiladas. 

There's something I find exhilarating and sentimental about growing fruit. There are fond memories of toddler aged Forest and Stokes feasting on the fifty foot row of raspberries in late summer and autumn; the plums I canned one year when I had a bumper crop, and the apple trees I inherited from a previous owner that I tended and thinned carefully to grow huge, crispy sweet and tangy apples that I still crave.

Growing your own fruit is hard work and it's risky, but it's worth it.



Bicolor Juniper

Another post from vacation.  It's been hot and dry in  the Black Hills this summer, and junipers are showing their resilience.  In this climate, the creeping brown crud of dead and dying branches caused by Phomopsis and Kabatina fungal infections and slow branch by branch death caused by juniper twig girdler are not a possibility. 

Alan found this beauty growing somewhere in travels around the Black Hills and was drawn to it by its split personality.  It's as though a 'Blue Rug' had a tryst with a 'Gold Strike' and the product is trying very hard to take after both parents. It is indeed a Juniperus horizontalis, and you can find colonies hugging the ground in sunny rocky places on limestone or gypsum in many places in the northern foothills of the Black Hills. I've also seen a different form of this species growing near limy springs where their roots are saturated and the shade is dense. This form has growth that is a bit more upright, as Alan's juniper is.

I have often thought that I should take some cuttings and see how it grows at home.  If it can withstand our fungal diseases and juniper twig girdler, it might be an interesting plant for those who just can't make up their mind what color juniper they would like to have.  Perhaps Alan will trade some cutting for a cherry pie bribe.  More on that when I post this Friday.

A Basket of Bees

On vacation, I went down to my brother's home to do some laundry. It's a quick and efficient operation there because there are clotheslines to hang the laundry to dry. When we got there in the late afternoon, it was 90° and the humidity was very low. In each load, the first clothes that I hung were dry by the time I was finished hanging the last. And the smell of fresh air in them is so nice. 

Enough about mundane chores. I'm always excited to see what is thriving in Alan's garden. It's different every time, depending on the weather, frequency of irrigation, and temperatures. The basket of gold, Centaurea macrocephala, was a clear winner this time. A wide variety of wasps and bees were relishing the pollen and nectar, rare in this very dry year.

When the golden florets are gone, the ornate bracts surrounding the flower head remain.  They really do look like baskets.  I remember growing these in trial cut flower plots when I was working on my masters.  I don't remember that they were all that popular, I think because we all tend to want to look at refreshing blues and crisp whites when confronted with summer heat.  But these do have a clean yellow appeal.