Fruiting Seasons

Not this past spring, but the spring before, I bought a new nectarine tree, and planted it.

This year it produced a ton of fruit. The fruits are small; we really could have thinned the tree out much more savagely, and I'm not convinced that the poor creature is getting as much water as it should.
Today I went out to swim with the granddaughter of the house, and when I went to the deep end of the pool to dive in, I noticed a small dried-up nectarine on the ground. I started testing the fruit, and found that many (but not all) of the nectarines were ready. I bit into one and got a very big surprise.

I'd bought this tree to replace the one I'd ordered from Stark's nursery catalog (I was going to link but the bastards don't have a website), which was the worst-tasting excuse for nectarines I've ever found. The label on this little tree said that the fruit was known for intense flavor. Yes, intense nectarine flavor is what I was hoping for.

And it is very tasty ... but the label didn't mention that this was a white-fleshed nectarine. Not my favorite. Luck is with my husband, however, who prefers the white-fleshed nectarines to the yellow ones. The granddaughter loves them, too. She and I went out and picked a big bowl of them to chill.

Both the granddaughter and the neighborhood mockingbirds are already after the seedless pearlette grapes, too, even though they won't be fully ripe for another few weeks. Some of them are ripe enough to taste good, some are bitter as only unripe grapes can be. It warmed my old-time scavenger's heart the other day to see Lil out in the back yard filching grapes without a worry in the world.

But today, after we discovered the nectarines, we swam and played in the pool until I was worn out (she wasn't, of course), and when we had harvested our fruit, we rewarded ourselves by jumping into the pool again.

Ah, summer!