Peaches!

Today, as I edited a few more pages in Janet Derouin's book about our Danvers ancestors, these words jumped out at me: 

"...and everyone who had a peach or pear tree on their property
had windfall fruit to give away." 

Janet was describing the beginning of September in 1879.  She wrote those words decades ago.  As I read them now, in September 2019, I smile and think of all the peaches waiting in the kitchen. My husband planted a small peach tree in our yard a few years ago. Squirrels claimed most of its meager fruit in its early years.

But THIS year, for the first time, the fruit is coming in such quantities that we can hardly keep up. Fruit falls to the ground daily, even as we try to pick the ripe ones before they fall and get bruised. We eat peaches morning, noon and night. We give peaches to neighbors. We took peaches to friends last weekend. What a crop of delicious peaches!

So of course I'm struck by the coincidence that I happen to have reached this page in Janet's book just as I'm having my own experience with a September surplus of peaches.

Here are a few photos of our peach tree (in Holyoke, Mass).

I don't recall having peach trees in Danvers in my childhood, but we had other fruit, which I'll write about in my next entry.

August 29, 2019

Planting the peach tree, August 2015

Same peach tree (pruned), May 2016 

I did not expect such a bounty of fruit from the very small tree we had planted in August 2015.