Midsummer Cherries

As this rubbish summer tries its level best to break through, cherry trees are starting to look much more tempting. The Solstice occurs this week; it seems inconceivable that the nights will be drawing in after this…

 

As the cherries ripen on the branches, it will be a straight race between the humans and the birds to see who gets the best of the crop. It’s a good idea to keep a close eye on your favourite trees; the trouble is that the birds will tend to eat the fruit before they are properly ripe.

A lot of trees that I have noticed have small cherries on them this year. Also, many seem to have something eating the upper leaves; some seem to be missing the top third of their canopy. To cap it all, the strong winds have damaged some of the recently ripe fruit. The pictures here are from the industrial estate where I work and you can see the stone inside one cherry.
Fortunately, the kids and I still have a couple of brilliant trees, loaded with fat juicy beauties, waiting in the wings. Maybe this weekend we can give the birds a run for their money, if it stops raining for long enough...

Cherry Blossom

 March gives way to April, daffodils blur into bluebells and plum bloom passes the baton to the cherry blossom (apple and pear flowers will follow shortly)...

You know that Spring is well under way when you can spot cherry blossom by the roadsides. Once you can recognise the antenna like branches, festooned with pink or white flowers, you begin to realise how very common these trees are.

White Bloom on a Blue Sky

The Cherry is a native tree, they grow wild in woodland and fields but they are also highly ornamental and are often planted to line roadsides, avenues and even supermarket car parks.

Close-Up of Cherry Flowers

Some of the more decorative blooms will not later develop into useful fruit but a great many of these everyday trees will bear a huge crop of juicy dark red cherries.

A Cherry Blossom Vortex (perhaps)

The thing that always surprises me, is that nearly all of these delicious beauties will be eaten by the birds; I rarely see other families out picking cherries locally even though they cost a fortune in the supermarket; we gathered bucket loads just in the St Deny’s area of Southampton last year.

Cherry Trees are Common, Even in the City

Cherries ripen around June/July and many will be sweet enough to be eaten straight off the tree. Others will taste tart, so these will be better for cooking. After the huge success of my poached pears, I’m going to have a go at bottling some cherries this year. The benefit of this is being able to eat cherries with ice cream, out of season.



Antenna



What we really need this year, is a local machine hire company to lend us a Powered Cherry Picker to drive us up into the branches of the larger trees, in order to relieve them of their ruby red jewels, this would enable us to beat the birds at their own game and stock up our kitchen cupboards.

It would also represent an interesting PR opportunity for a suitable machine hire company, so if any readers are employed in this field, I’m looking for suggestions and would like to stage some Cherry Picknik events this coming summer.

This Tree is in a Well-Known DIY Store Carpark