PEACHES

What a year for peaches and Charlie said he thought they liked drier years.  Well, I don't know why they wouldn't like wet years and it sure has been.  There are Soooooo many peaches.

The other day, I took probably thirty off the branch dragging on the ground.  That was quite an undertaking.  I took the wheelchair over there, but when I got there, I couldn't find a level enough area to be able to pick from the wheelchair so I got out of the wheelchair and had to grab it before it went down the hill.  After setting the brakes, I crawled up to the tree, got up on my knees, and started picking.  The peaches on just the one branch filled a large bowl.  Then, I had to alternately drag the full bowl of peaches and the wheelchair up to level ground to get back in the wheelchair.  I wheeled back to the house but couldn't hold onto the peaches and propel up the ramp so I left the peaches at the bottom of the ramp for John to bring up when he came along.

These peaches were firm so I put them in a brown paper bag with a banana.  The fruit flies showed up about that time so we had to move the peaches out to the front porch.  I separated them into groups; slightly bruised in a bowl on the table,  a few with large rotten spots, I put directly on the table, two were ready to cut up for our pancakes, and the rest went carefully into a clean dry paper bag, which I rolled up and put on the porch floor.  This morning we found the bag had been opened and some of the peaches removed and eaten.  First the fruit flies, then a somewhat larger critter.(s)  I told John we just had to decide who we wanted to feed the peaches to since it didn't look like we were going to get many.

Back at the tree, the many many peaches were not as many, at least not on the tree.  In one night, several,  had found their way to the ground.   Now, they say, deer won't eat peaches off the tree, the rabbits can only reach the branch that had been dragging on the ground, and I haven't seen any squirrels lately.  Maybe a raccoon?  There is one peach high up on a branch that has been half eaten on the tree.  We looked at it yesterday and then today.  John said it was even more eaten today, yet still hanging on.

  I was on my way to go pick some more off the tree (what was I thinking the rest are too high), and see if I could salvage any off the ground, when John showed up.  He picked a couple of handfuls that are still firm but smell like peaches.  We put them in the cubby in the golf cart and have not brought them in yet so maybe those will get eaten by still another critter.

Another day passes with peaches now in different spots to be forgotten.  Hopefully, in a few days, I will blog about a peach pie complete with pictures.  That didn't happen with the blueberry pie, though.

Last week I picked about 12 pounds of blueberries in West Virginia.  I picked them from my wheelchair but fortunately the blueberry bushes were on level ground.  There were acres and acres of blueberry bushes under netting.  Now that is a drastic measure.  I got the blueberries home, flash froze them, and put them into containers in the freezer.  The fruit flies did not get involved until I made the blueberry pie (a lovely pie) and we accidentally left it out over night.  I was going to try to salvage some of it until I saw how infested it was.  At least we ate some of it and gave some to Charlie before they got to it.

So now when I do make that special peach pie, I certainly won't leave it out over night.