It’s Pickin’ Time!

It’s time! It’s time! My peaches are ripe and ready to be harvested.

I did not get one peach from my tree last year because I was away on a trip. My neighbors helped me out by gathering and enjoying every golden morsel. This year I planned my trip before they would be ripe. Fortunately all plants were late this year, so I was home in plenty of time.

After returning home from my vacation, I continued to check the fruit on my tree. There were lots of peaches, but they were small. I  removed some hoping that would give the remaining peaches extra nutrients. Day after day, I would tenderly caress the fuzzy ball hoping to feel a softer flesh, but they remained rock hard.

Then we were hit with rain and more rain. I longed for sunshine to change my peaches from pale yellow to a rosy golden orange. Between showers, I checked on the peaches, but still they were not ready. Would they ever be ready? Last year they were gone by the last week of July. We are now in August and I still  have not had one peach from my tree.

All that changed when the rain stopped and the sun returned. I went out to inspect my crop and discovered they were falling on the ground.

The fruit flies were feasting on these peaches.

Quickly I began checking, yes, they were softer! They began to fall into my hands as I touched them. I ran into the house to get a bowl to collect them. Bowl after bowl was filled and emptied onto the counter. . My husband brought the ladder around so I could gather more. Higher and higher I went plucking peaches. Each peach stretched my smile a bit wider.

I surveyed the counter and wondered what I was going to do with all these peaches. I have no desire to create jam or preserve them. So I began bagging them up and traveled to the neighbors delivering juicy sunshine.

They finally grew! Of course they weren’t all this size.

I eat peaches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and I savor every bit of that sweet juicy fruit. There are still more on the tree, so I will be in peach heaven for a bit longer.

PS: As I was preparing this post my neighbor brought me some warm peach cobbler she made with my peaches. Can it get any better than this? Yum!