The Backyard and Skepticism

We have a great backyard. I am so thankful for the family that lived here for years and years before we bought the house. They planted and tended all kinds of things to make the yard beautiful. . . and fruitful. We have hydrangeas (which are one of my favorite), and lilacs (a favorite, too, as they were my Grandmother's favorite!). We have a snowball bush and a Weeping Cherry, several beautiful Crepe Myrtle trees, and a lovely Dogwood. We have a few roses, and daffodils, and tulips. This year a peony bloomed. The children love to suck the nectar from the honeysuckle, and I've decided that it's scent is just about as perfect as the orange blossoms that we left in Florida (one of the scents I love most in all the world).

We've added to the lush yard: rosemary and lavender, thyme, oregano, zinnias and marigolds. We have our two little garden plots, which are bearing nicely. I love to stroll around the yard to see how everything is growing.

We also had a pear tree (though we never could quite decide if they were pears or apples!). We were skeptical of it's value, for even though it bore fruit heavily, it also attracted swarms of wasps to our backyard. B gave it the moniker "the Bee Tree." Though I tried to persuade him of it's value by baking pies and making sauce of the fruit, he determined that our children's safety was at risk, and so the Bee Tree is no more.

We have another kind of cherry tree growing at the corner of the house. Each year we have noted the small cherries it produces. We were skeptical whether or not these were edible; we had been told that this was another kind of ornamental cherry tree. So, we never ate the fruit, choosing, instead, to let the birds fight over it and make a mess in the backyard. This year, however, I looked more closely at the fruit. The cherries LOOKED like the kind of cherries I used to pick in the summers with my cousin Andrew, back on the farm. They were golden, tinged with red. They didn't seem quite so small this year as in years past. "Could it harm me to eat a cherry that wasn't meant for consumption?" I wondered. Surely, if it tastes bad, that would be a sign that I should not eat it.

So. . . I picked one and ate it. It tasted like the cherries I remembered. Not like the giant Bing cherries from the grocery store. Not like the bagged, bright red cherries at Sam's. . . I picked another and another and soon the children were watching me, asking "we can eat those?" and "can I try one?" and "are those berries?" Then they were eating cherries with me, all that we could reach. Rhy declared that he didn't care WHAT color they were! O picked them by the handful and climbed a tree, spitting pits down arbitrarily (especially on unsuspecting siblings wandering near!). T popped them in his mouth, sucked the cherries, and then would spit the whole thing back out and ask for another. What a treat! Why did we doubt for so long the merits of this tree?!

Now. . there is another tree on the corner of the shed that has some kind of berry on it. . . I think I'll do a little research before the berries are all gone!