Soar-Dream-France: Cherry Teamwork

Since I am a bit taller than Jean, she recruited me one day last week to come up and help her get some of her cherries off the tree. Dali and I walked up, and she stayed inside with Rocky while Jean and I got rake and ladder and went to work. My first thought was, these don't look like the usual cherries to me and they don't look ripe enough to pick. I mentioned it to Jean, who described them as a different variety and that they were definitely ready. Who am I to argue? I know as much about fruit as I know about tobacco-zippo. Height and teamwork paid off. I got the rake, held the branches down, and Jean picked the cherries off. We only needed the ladder once. Good thing, it wasn't very steady. I asked again if the cherries would get any redder and Jean said no. She'd already brought me this bunch that I had sitting in the bowl on the table. My first promise was jam, but yesterday's was even better...cherry pie sometime when I come up for dinner. Jean's cherries are in her refrigerator. Mine are continuing to sit in the bowl on the table. What color do you think my cherries are now?

I'd hoped to put flowers of some kind on the barn and the lavoir each summer that I came to spend my time here. In the beginning, a month wasn't enough time and money was short. In 2005, money was still short, but I was scheduled to be here that year from mid June to mid October. That summer I got them all duded up...geraniums and hanging petunias in the loft of the barn, and some other flowers in copper pots and a long window box in the point of the lavoir. I didn't have a hose (still don't), so I was hauling my huge green plastic watering can across the tracks with me...sometimes twice. Needless to say, this was all a little more trouble than I had bargained for. They managed to make it through the season, but I hadn't tried flowers again until now. Still no hose, but there's something about it being ours that feels like less trouble. Now the lavoir, that's a story for another time.