The Last Popcorn...

It's been a strange spring, so much so, I missed the apricot blossoms.

And I never miss the blossoms.

For the past several years, I've either taken pictures of the blossoms and used them for my Pic Of The Day, or written blog posts about the apricots. The trees and the blossoms are part of my childhood, part of the experience that is growing up on my street.

Where my house sits and where the home I grew up in sits was once an orchard. The trees--cherry and apricot. Of that grove, only one original apricot tree remains and it now belongs to those who bought the home of my youth after my mother passed away. It still yields fruit. Several years ago, we planted an apricot tree as well. It's smaller (obviously...), but we do get apricots most years. They're fickle fruit, especially in our climate. We normally get a late frost which many times kills the harvest.

Will it happen again this year? I'm not sure--time will tell. 

I've seen many trees in bloom, and more will follow. So why do I find the apricot trees so interesting? Maybe it's because nothing's guaranteed. When the apple or pear trees bloom, it's later in the spring. Rarely do those trees not bear fruit. But the apricot--it's a mystery that's not known until those buds grow and turn from small fuzzy green ovals to bigger orange spheres. When I see the apricots mature it means the system worked, the fruit beat the odds.

It sort of gives me hope.

This morning, I saw a single blossom still hanging on. I'm not sure if it will turn into delicious fruit. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

I Sure Hope They Made It...

We have one little apricot tree, a single tree that--weather permitting--produces quite a few apricots. They're small, but good.

I grew up across the street from where we live now. Decades ago, my parents bought about ten acres on the hillside and Dad built his house in an apricot and cherry orchard. There's still a few of those at least fifty-year old trees remaining. Those living in the house Dad built now watch after the old tree.

Funny thing about apricots, sometimes the fruit doesn't survive the spring. Since we live in the mountains, and since the weather in those mountains can be a tad fickle (but not as fickle as some think it to be...), we get the occasional snowstorm in April/May. It happened last Saturday.

Tonight I hiked up to our little apricot tree to do a little inspection. I saw several baby apricots--I'm sure there's a scientific name for them. And since my arboreal knowledge is slim at best, I have no idea if the fruit has survived the storm. Perhaps seeing the little apricots means they have. I do know one thing, time will let us know if they survived or not.