plums and cherries...

My good friend Stephka has been stealing fruit.  Rescuing more like.

The Georgeson Botanical Gardens is a wonderful place.  But their goal is not to feed people, per se.  And they have fences around the apples plot and the beehive because people were messing with it.  And they just lost a lot of funding.  So my friend has been going and shaking down the little golden plums off of the plum tree, and picking the little translucent cherries -they look like currants (which also grow up here).  She shared a bowl of them with me at work the other day.  I should have taken a picture.  It was so pretty, with the bright red cherries scattered over the yellow plums in the white stoneware bowl. 

Yep, plums grow in Fairbanks.  Who'd a thunk>? And with an established tree or two, one should be able to have enough for jams and conserves and prunes and tartes and things.  They're just a little smaller, about the size of quarters.

Guess who's tracking down and planting plum saplings come spring?

Chokecherries, red raspberries, wild blueberries, golden raspberries, wild lingonberries, high bush cranberries, red currants, black currants, bunchberries, apples in tents or on crabapple stock, and now plums and cherries...  who says fruit can't grow in the north?