July 8: Wild cherries ripe

The black cherries, which I first wrote about on June 24, are starting to ripen now. I knew it first because a few had fallen onto the walkway bridge from my apartment. They soon get crushed and make small round dark purple stains on the wood.

They don't ripen all at once, even on the same stem. One by one or two by two they'll turn dark red and then black, while the rest of the fruits are still green or light red.



Wild cherries aren't easy to use. They're very plentiful, produce loads of fruit, and they don't take any work to cultivate, but once you pick a few buckets of those tiny cherries, you then have to process them. They're at least fifty percent seed, so you have to remove the fruit or the juice from the pits. In the past we've done it by squeezing or pressing. Your hands and arms get all stained, and when you wash them in the kitchen sink, the white ceramic turns the most gorgeous color of purple. From that you might get a few jars of jelly. It's nice to use every kind of fruit that grows, but I'm not surprised there isn't a lot of black cherry jam or wine out there.