Fruits to Anticipate

If you have never seen a pawpaw in bloom, you've missed it! The flowers are brown cups that hang upside down around the future fruit. I've only had the joy of eating pawpaws on a couple of occasions, and am awfully glad that I have a tree here. Last year, not only was the tree not mine yet, but it also had only a few fruit on it. Last year just wasn't a very good year for a lot of plants. Anyway, the owner and I kept our eyes on it waiting for them to get ripe, but the myriads of squirrels that live here got them before she or I got a chance to even taste one!

I don't know if you can tell it by the picture above, but the tree has a lot of blooms on it this year. Now to figure out how to thwart the squirrels!

Hubby noticed this morning that the black haw flowers were gone. Little clusters of future haws were left behind in their place. Other wild fruit we have here include gooseberries, blackberries, wild raspberries, and wild strawberries. We have an apple tree and a peach tree along with a couple of grapevines. And of course the woods are full of wild grapevines. I have a wreath I made on the front porch. I decorated it with bittersweet berries last fall and a little birds nest that blew down out of a tree this spring. I'm thinking of trying to make grape drink from the wild grapes this year. All you do is place a cup of washed grapes in a quart canning jar, add a cup of sugar, fill with water, and process it in the canner. Leave it for at least a month before using it. I've done it before with tame grapes.

It is cold and the blackberries are in bloom, so maybe this is what they call "blackberry winter." At least I think it's the blackberries that are blooming. I am not that good yet at telling the difference between blackberry and raspberry plants. I know that blackberry leaf tea is supposed to be a good remedy for diarrhea, and that red raspberry leaf tea is good for women, especially throughout pregnancy. I had red raspberry plants during my last pregnancy (seventeen years ago!) and that was sure nice. There is nothing quite as luscious as a fresh red raspberry right off the cane! Sweet as Koolaid!

And regardless of whether the fruits do good this year or not, it's always a good time to grow these fruit: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23)

God bless you with good fruits of all kinds!