Up here, the prize is the apple tree. We don’t know what kind it is — it was supposed to be a Golden Delicious, but the apples it produces are big and red and amazingly tasty (nothing at all like the Red Delicious at the store that taste more like foamcore). I’m gunning for all sorts of apple treats this year: cobbler, crepes, tart tatin…

Eeek, I think most of the apple, pear, citrus and some others probably have 40 or more years on them. The cherry trees are probably about 30 or so at least. The apricot is about the same as the cherry, 30. My grandmother planted a plum tree for me about the time I was walking, I suppose I must have liked plums. I enjoyed them less and less over the years and within the last 5 years my uncle took the sucker out. They can make the yard awful messy when you don’t pick the fruit, ick. Yeah, very nice stuff.

Biggles

Biggles: That is so wonderful that you have the same garden in the family all these years! I’ll confess I was a bit of a tomboy and when I wasn’t helping my dad I was all over the gravel driveway with Tonka Trucks. I think I may have even tried the hole-to-china routine once or twice. I hope you get your chance to take over the garden — the fruit trees must be especially wonderful with over twenty seasons of bounty behind them.

Looks like we’re about the same age, I have some of those same prints with about the same background of me. Someplace. My treat was my grandmother’s garden. She’d spend the entire day out in the garden, I was right along with her. Except I played with my cars, dug holes that kind of stuff. One of my favorite trees was the mandarin orange tree, loved it so much she made me a little bench I could sit on and peel the oranges. Best times ever. She’s long since passed and my uncle has kept the house in the family. The garden has taken on many faces over the last 20 years, but the fruit trees are still all there and in good shape. He’s good with it as well. Some day I hope to move my two boys and wife in to the house and take over the garden myself. I don’t know how large the yard is, but it’s big enough to feed my family of 4 and quite a bit more. Whoda thought a house bought in 1946 would still be giving the same family food & shelter 59 years later.

Biggles