Plum Foolish

As you can see from the photos above, we have a lot of plums on our hands. The wee Victoria plum tree behind our bedroom has just exploded with plums. Over the past several days we have harvested hundreds and hundreds of plums and there are still hundreds ripening on the tree. Most of the ones we harvested hadn't had a chance to ripen because they were so heavy that they broke the small boughs they clung to. We had to cut the broken boughs off and harvest what we could of the plums.

Overabundance

In the past few days I have sorted plums into the categories: ripe, ripening, and hard. I have given away bags full of ripening plums. I gave some to Pat, my neighbour to the south. In return, she gave me some of her home-grown tomatoes, a nice exchange. I gave some plums to Robbie in exchange for some more tutoring from her on my knitting projects. I gave a bagful to Janet and Trevor Griffiths who live around the corner. And yesterday afternoon a golfing friend of Don's who also is a tiler, came by to talk with us about some tiling jobs we may have done. I sent him away with another bagful.

With 2 lbs of the plums I made a plum puree for making Plum Fool which is a dessert made by mixing the puree with Greek yoghurt. The puree can also be mixed into plain low-fat yoghurt for a healthy snack. I have recipes ready to try out for plum butter (for spreading on toast), plum cake (Robbie's recipe), and plum crumble and I'll make another attempt at freezing some. Before I make the plum butter I must get some jars. (Of course I had Don take all our jars--and we had dozens of them--to another golfer friend a few weeks ago whose wife makes fruit jams!)

Overgrowth

Earlier in the week we had Ian Reid, a local maintenance/gardening contractor, stop by to look at the rock garden that sits outside our front entrance. Evergreens planted on the same line as the new front of the house--where the extension took the front wall to--separate the front garden with the side where the little rock garden sits. These evergreens have grown so tall that from the road, you cannot see the side yard and can hardly see our front door. From the front door looking outward, those evergreens bock not only our view but also our light. Further, the rock garden is overgrown because when it was created with the usual rock garden plantings, small evergreens were planted also. Today, aside from one puny dwarf azalea, all that remains of the rock garden are the rocks and the evergreens which are no longer small. It just looks like a big unattractive clump that serves no purpose.

When daughter Wendy was here in June, we asked her opinion about what we could do with the rock garden (since she is an excellent gardener). Should I try to replant rock garden plants and severely cut back the evergreens? Her verdict was "level it". So this week we talked with Ian about not only taking out the rock garden, but also taking out the evergreens that separate the front lawn from the side of the house. This should open the garden up considerably. As for what we do with the area where the rock garden is now, we're still thinking about it. We'll live with it just gravelled over for the rest of the year and perhaps by spring we'll have an idea. (The one that's percolating in my head at the moment involves a water feature and some small purple and yellow irises.)

We also had Ian look at the overgrown evergreens that border our terrace and that sit outside my studio. We'd like him to "top" these trees so that we have more light and a view of the hills which, at this point, is totally blocked. It's probably going to be October before Ian can get to us because of other work he's got in the pipeline but I have taken some "Before" photos which perhaps you'll see in a future blog after the work is done.

Our weather has been terrific almost all week. Right now Don and I are setting out to enjoy another bright day. We're going to Rannoch Moor which sits to the east of Glen Coe. Don's made us a picnic lunch so we'll do a bit of hiking. Perhaps I'll have some good photos for you tomorrow.