333/336 [Life is just a bowl of something]
Nothing says summer to me quite like the taste of cherries. Nowadays we have cherries imported into the supermarkets so I have become used to seeing them on the shelves at unexpected times. But there is still something special about the first of the local cherries appearing in the shops and I have never tired of waiting for them and enjoying them once they’re here. One of the first things we did after moving into our house was plant our own cherry tree. But the birds, mostly minahs and sparrows, were faster than we were at getting them off the tree. So we covered it with bird netting which forced them into sitting on the shed roof, divebombing the netted tree and picking up the fallen cherries that resulted. This year, the cockatoos got in on the act. They didn’t even bother waiting for them to ripen or give us the chance to share but stripped the fully loaded tree in a matter of hours. It might be time to take up training a bird of prey for next year.
Nature at its finest — and fiercest! It’s so lovely to think that someone is getting long, delicious summer days as we see ours shrink down to less than eight hours of sunlight here…
This is kind of freaky. Want to know what my darling spouse brought home yesterday?
Cherries!
J
We used to have cherry trees, back on the farm. Luckily, the birds would leave us the lower branches. The main plague was the obligatory doolally neighbour, who thought that dressing up as his own mother (dead for decades) complete with lipstick and a head-scarf would somehow trick us into not recognising him as he trundled across our yard with a bucket and step-ladder in broad daylight…