In which I host a pitty party

No, that's not a misspelling in the header. Today was the first day of real harvest in my garden. I stalked the not-very-wild dwarf Northstar cherry tree off the southwest corner of my house (those are bladderwort blooms in the foreground). The tree is not so large -- just about 2 meters tall --, so you would think conquest would be simple.

It is to laugh.

I took out my straw hats (don't want sunburn), and filled four of them to the brim with fruits. I had a little help from some cats, but I didn't have much opportunity by the time I started pickin' fruit to photograph critters too. Suffice it to say, the cats didn't get many cherries into the hats.

When I was done picking, I brought the mass of cherries over to Mom's house. Aside from the fact that my oven & fridge are unreliable, Mom has the cherry pitting machine, so pies get made at her place. After I washed them, I put the hatloads of cherries into a big ol' plastic container whose brand shall remain nameless, and stuffed the container into Mom's functioning fridge. Cool.

Why not start popping them pits out right away? i hear you ask. Well, there's always a chance you'll encounter some extra protein source inside the fruit, and the cold makes them sluggish enough you can cut them out with a minimum of gross-out.

So, two hours later, my best friend Mari came over with roughly three quarts she had picked from the other tree in my yard (I had told her if she picked from that tree, she could keep the fruit, since I discovered there's something I'm allergic to growing right next to the Eastern treeboard). She, too, had chilled them well, and they were ready to pit.


Unfortunately, the pitting gadget wouldn't work on these Northstar cherries, since the hole in the base of the gadget was just about the same size as the whole fruit, here, so we were obliged to take out our little paring knives and cut out those little stones individually, with caution and decorum.

It was a gruesome task.

Each of us managed to pit the equivalent of about a gallon of these pretty little gems some of which were put into the freezer, but this particular bowl went inside a couple of crusts.

The one thing I learned about Northstar cherries is, they are very juicy. We doubled the amount of thickeners the recipe called for, and still ended up with a dish more soup than pie... well, at least it tasted like cherry pie. And, we were in such a hurry to nibble it down, I forgot to get the camera to document mom's artwork.

But, Dad said, if one has to acknowledge the Hallmark-Greeting-Card-promotional Father's Day, homemade cherry pie will suffice to make it bearable...

He's eating the rest of this for breakfast tomorrow.