Plum crazy...

Mom and Dad planted this Brooks Plum tree in the back yard about 27 years ago, I think. Brooks make the best dried prunes you ever chewed on - like candy!

At this stage, they are ALMOST ripe. A few are getting to the characteristic purpley-blue-black that means...

... the coons will be arriving soon. We aren't the only ones who adore these morsals from heaven. This is the first year in a long long time that the 2-strand electric wire fence, just 15 or so inches high (optimum for coon-zapping) has been put up as the plums reach this point. We were willing to share. This time.

But those little bandits had to go and squeal to the resident deer tribe. The plums the coons knocked off were scarfed up by the twins, the mamas and the one papa lurking about. One morning I caught one mama helping herself right off the tree. Shameless.

We were generous, though. And managed to get our share, too. Those plums are the BEST. They are European plums, not Asian. The Asian plums have that bitter skin, even though the flesh and juice may be sweet. The European plum family are sweet and fleshy, top to bottom, inside and out, through and through! Dark purple skin with golden flesh. Gorgeous.

And free-stone, to boot! The pit just drops out when you cut the plum down the crease. I like to simply pull them apart at the crease, saves time packing a knife when I'm working in the garden. Dessert was never so easy!

While we love them best fresh, a lot of them made it into canning jars over the years. Last year, I froze halves on cookie sheets then dumped them into quart freezer bags. They are tasty with only about 5 minutes of defrosting, nice and icey and sweet.

Usually, besides the coon raids, we lose a good deal of the crop to rain (cracks the skins on the ripe ones, then mold sets in), or nasty hornets start gnawing on them, letting rot start. The tree has had problems with some diseases off and on, but has never been sprayed and manages to keep pumping out those superb plums.

Last spring we had the Master Gardener class come prune the tree. Mom was afraid we'd lost the crop for the year. But nope, it gave us gobs of plums. This year there were even more. The tree is the healthiest I've seen it, and the plums are huge and clear of any disease. So we could afford to share.

Actuallly, we had no idea that tree produced so MANY plums. After foiling the coons each year, we could never get those highest ones picked, and the birds helped themselves, too. So we were never sure just what the yield could be. But this month, the pits were the only thing left behind as the nightly raiders ate their fill. Every morning we had a nice crop of pits all over the ground, as the plums ripened and were scarfed down. Now the tree is bare, and there are some mighty spoiled coons and deer out there. Hope they enjoyed it, 'cuz we may not be so generous next year...

And I wish I had a nickle for every pit I've picked up off the ground each day the past couple of weeks. Enough for a plane ticket to Arizona, betcha!