Baby fruit

After an explosive season of blossoms from plums, apples, and other fruit, we're well on our way toward a bumper crop this season.

I photographed two apple trees in our driveway when they were in full bloom. These pictures were taken on May 1.

The flowers were thick with pollinators – honeybees as well as wild bees, various types of flies, and who knows what else. All I know is we could stand under these trees and listen to the loud humming of all the various insects.

Can you see the honeybee (lower center) in this photo?

As a result of all this insect industry, the fruit is beginning to set. I went around a couple days ago and photographed some of the baby fruit we have so far.

I started with the four beds of strawberries in the garden.

These are ever-bearing varieties, not June-bearing, but the first wave of fruit will also ripen in June.

The two apple trees, whose blossoms were shown at the top of the post, are now busy producing fruit.

Lots and lots of baby apples.

We have a massive plum tree in our driveway. Last summer, I photographed it when it was heavy-laden with fruit.

It looks like this year, while perhaps not matching last year in terms of sheer volume, will still be highly productive.

Our older apple trees, the ones we had professionally pruned a few years ago, are also producing heavily. A few weeks ago, they had lots of blossoms.

Now they have lots of baby apples.

Of the four (different kinds of) peach trees we planted a few years ago, all are thriving, though two are significantly bigger than the others.

But all four are producing fruit, so much so that I may have to thin some out lest they get too heavy for the branches. Peaches are, hands down, my all-time favorite fruit, so it's gratifying to see a hearty crop.

The blueberries spent the last few weeks blossoming heavily.

After last year's bumper crop of 92.5 lbs., I'm braced to get even more this year.

The fruit-set is very heavy. Normally I start picking around the end of June, with the harvest lasting until very early September.

That's all the baby fruit we have around us at the moment. The other major fruit category around here – blackberries – won't flower until mid-summer and won't be ready to pick until last August or early September.

Seasons of bounty!

Cotton-candy season

Around here, April is what I call "cotton-candy season" for the simple reason that the wild plum trees explode with blossoms, making the hillsides look like they're covered with bits of cotton candy.

Get the sun involved (either early in the morning or late in the afternoon), and the effect is magical.

Closer up, the trees are no less enchanting.

I took some shots of the blossoms on the plum tree in our driveway.

Then we had one day of brisk wind, and that was the end of that. Without the wind, normally the falling petals coat the roadways. This year, they were mostly whisked away in shimmering showers of white. The petals were too small to photograph during this process (I tried), so all that was left was bits of petals caught in road ruts.

Cotton-candy season doesn't last long, a week or two max (which reminds me of the line "Gather ye rose-buds while ye may" from the poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time").

Because everything is early this year due to our freaky-mild winter, I'm hoping it wasn't too early for the insect pollinators to do their job.

Wild fruit galore

As I mentioned before, this year the wild plums are producing abundantly. Last year, nada. This year ... holy cow.

We have a massive plum tree in our driveway.

The fruit was so heavy, I was afraid some of the branches would break.

The fruit often looked like clusters of big grapes.

I was describing this bounty of wild plums to a woman at our church, and she wanted to know if she could have some. You bet! In addition to our tree, I called a neighbor who has two abundantly fruitful trees right on the road and got permission to harvest some of his plums.

Between the neighbor's trees and our tree, our church friend went home with somewhere on the order of ten gallons of plums. The branches of our trees are a lot lighter.

And that's not all. Now the apples are maturing. They're not ripe yet, but they're getting there.

We have several venerable apple trees on our property, trees we had professionally trimmed (back when we had money) in an effort to bring them back into productivity. The trees are producing heavily, though the apples are still fairly small. However they're delicious.

There are also thousands upon thousands of wild apple trees in our region.

But wait, there's more! We also have blackberries. Lots and lots of blackberries.

Again, last year, this ubiquitous fruit yielded nothing. Zip, zilch, zero, nada. This year, as with the plums, it's making up for lost time. While we have some outlier berries already ripening, most won't get ripe until late August through mid-September.

Personally I hate blackberries. Not the fruit itself (that's delicious!), but how aggressively the vines spread. There are whole hillsides and pastures taken over by blackberries. That was one nice thing about our last home; we didn't have any blackberries around us.

But say what you will, we live in a spot that has wild fruit galore. It benefits the wildlife immeasurably. That's a lot to be thankful for ... even with blackberries.

Fruitful trees

Last year, if you recall, we were nonplussed that not one single wild plum or wild blackberry bush yielded any fruit.

Seriously, in late summer these two categories are usually astoundingly fruitful. The wild animals congregate toward this abundance in droves, as you can imagine. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of wild plum trees and untold acres of wild blackberries, and as far as we could tell not one single plum or blackberry ripened. The lack of this bonanza must have been as difficult for the wildlife as it was bewildering for us.

But this year ... this year the abundance has returned, perhaps all the heavier for its lack last year.

In spring, the hillsides were lit up with plum blossoms, like cotton candy.

These blooms are spectacularly beautiful.

Now that full summer is here, the blooms are translating into developing fruit. Take this venerable plum tree by the side of our road, for example.

The young plums are so thick, they almost look like clusters of grapes.

A couple weeks ago, the blackberries flowered, and all indications point to a similar level of production.

Now the petals are dropping and the tiny fruit is forming.

We never found out why there was no fruit last year. But at least this year, the wildlife are going to  feast.