For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.
O is for Orchard
A couple of summers ago, I took my three youngest children, then 7, 3, and 2, to a local orchard to pick peaches. It was hot. My 2-year-old kept disappearing down rows of fruit-heavy trees. There were bugs. But it was still fun.
I like orchards enough that I gave one of the main characters in Rightfully Ours a summer job at an orchard. Paul spends late spring, summer, and fall at the orchard, working alongside a mixture of teens and migrant workers harvesting peaches and apples.
The alley that runs behind our property is called Pear Alley, and we learned that the old Bartlett Pear tree that sits at the end of the property is the last of what was once a pear orchard. Apparently, our tree is the only one to survive the addition of hundreds of homes in two developments built behind our property in the 1990s.
I’ve not spent more than a couple of hours walking an orchard with my kids, but that one pear tree has taught me they are a lot of work. Last year, the harvest was thin, but if the number of brilliant, beautiful blossoms currently blooming on our tree is any indication, we’re going to have a bumper crop this year!
Have you ever picked your own fruit at an orchard?
Every fall we pick apples at Apple Hill. We go with friends and bring a snack (peanut butter cookies, traditionally)! Fun!
I would love to pick peaches one day. And I think that’s so cool that you have the sole surviving peach tree from an orchard. Okay, a little sad too.
Last year, that pear tree had such a pitiful season, I though it was done. But this spring, it looks spectacular! Produces delicious fruit too. And we do nothing to it but snip off a few branches.
We didn’t have any u-pick orchards where I grew up in Florida, but I’ll never forget going to pick strawberries. OMG! They were SO good.
They are delicious from the field – ripened to the top, not picked early to be shipped to the stores.
I hope your pear tree produces bountifully this year! It is a testament to endurance in an environment that has taken all of it’s fellow trees. I’ve never been in an orchard, but I know I would love it. Here in West Texas we have just one small tree, a globe willow in our yard, it is tenacious too, and I think it will grow to be big and old!
Read today’s A to Z post at Josie Two Shoes
Thanks, Josie! I may have to brush up on my canning skills this year.
How lovely to be the caretaker of the last orchard survivor! Pear trees are always so gorgeous in bloom, too. 🙂
Yes, I’m a little attached to that tree. Hope it has many more years left in it.