It looks like 2009 will be the year of the fruit in our yard.
For the first time this year, our young apple trees started the summer covered in apples. Last weekend I noticed that 3 apples had been ruined by the birds. I had decided not to let that happen again this year, so I purchased a package of plain brown bags, with the plan to cover the apples until they ripen. When we went out today to staple the bags over the apples, I found to my dismay that over 50 apples had been ruined by the birds in this past week. What a shame. There were apples left undamaged, so, yes, we bagged them! What a good husband I have, he helped despite being obviously self conscious when neighbors drove by! It took only 15 minutes. Our trees now look quite odd, but I am hopeful we may now get some apples to ripen. I got the idea when watching a show about fruit in Japan that was hand pollinated due to lack of bees, and then bagged to ensure quality of the valuable fruit.
Another tree covered with fruit for the first time is the tangerine. You may recall that last year the tree had its first fruit, 7 beautiful tangerines. This year it has dozens of young fruit, and I am excited about the possibility of a large harvest in early winter. Here you see the tree with the beautiful jewels on the ends of the branches.
Lastly, the fig has finished its early flush of huge fruit, and now is covered with smaller figs. It will be interesting to see if the flavor of this larger crop of smaller fruit is more intense than the extremely mild flavor of the few large fruit from earlier in the season.
