Cherries
Cherries
It’s late into a warm evening at the end of May and Leo looks down from his celestial hunting grounds in the dark night sky. His rear is partly hidden by thin diaphanous clouds, but his head is clear to see. Cicadas sing in the fields and a fire-fly crosses the unlit patio, its luminescent tail lit like a lamp outside a bordello. Inside the small outdoor kitchen, a pale brown moth the colour of dead grass, has moved across the tiles of the wall to watch more closely the cherries boiling in the pot.
The cherries were suspended like little red lights from the branches of the tree in the lower meadow not three hours ago. As the sun set, the evening flies, which love my blood, came out and the globules of red they left behind on my skin resembled the cherries which I was picking. As I picked and ate, birds hidden in the forest of trees beyond the meadow sang their evening chorale. The mezzo soloist, a cuckoo, flown in from Africa especially for the May series of concerts, sang its flutey solo lines and the notes of the golden orioles rose in an ecstatic bliss.
Picking cherries
Up into the pale blue sky I stretched, my body teetering on the tips of my toes. I strained fingertips towards a green serrated leaf just within the range of two fingers. I pulled tentatively and slowly on the supple branch, and oh so slowly and carefully it bent towards my will. With one hand steadying the branch, the other clutched at a bunch of firm, waxy beads. They shifted a little in my palm as my hold tightened and then with a gentle tug, they quietly gave of themselves. There, in my hand, were the first fruits, carmine red. Into my mouth they went and with a squeeze of teeth there was an ineluctable explosion of juice, the resistance of stone, the softness of flesh; a tartness blended with sweetness.
After an hour of gentle prising, teasing, caressing, and eating, the tree had given what it could. Some berries were left on the tree for birds, a gift for their song, others on the floor for those who were too tired to fly.
Buying cherry trees
Three years ago, I’d bought three young trees from a man who’d been bent by age. He was grey haired, his face riven with deep channels, and he wore baggy trousers and a stained white shirt. He was standing in a lay-by on the side of a busy road beside his much-dented white van which was filled with whips, their roots bundled into bags of canvas.
‘La fruita è molta buona’, he’d said - the fruit is very good.
I asked the name of the variety.
‘Ciliege’ he replied - cherry. ‘Dieci euro’, he’d added.
Of the three I’d bought, only one remains, the others succumbing to the droughts of the climate changed summers.
Cooking cherry jam
With guests fed and supper cleared, I stoned four kilos of fruit. Perhaps there’s a special tool for this job. Perhaps experts use a knife and delicately cut the fruit and remove the stone. But I know not the secrets of experts, for this was my first cherry harvest and I stood beside the stone table gently squeezing a berry between finger and thumb, squirting little jets of juice as I did onto my shirt and across the table. For an hour I stood, squeezing and extracting the pits, and a mound of stoneless fruit piled slowly in a bowl.
It is night now and two tawny owls are exchanging the news of the day across the valley. Behind me as I write, sugar is dissolving in the cherry juice mixed with a squeeze of lemon. For ten minutes the syrup will boil just as Patience Grey has instructed in her iconic book, “Honey from a Weed”, after which, according to instruction I will add the fruit.
I stir whilst a fruity and steamy sweetness wafts around me, taking deep rooted memories back to the time when on ‘Sweet Saturdays’, I exchanged a sixpence for some cherry bombs stored in a big glass jar. As I stir the spoon against the pan, its sound recalls the few hard lumps of coloured sugared delight falling into the metal of his weighing scales.
I stir and watch the moth move away from the steam.
I stir some more, gently. Dreamily.
Patience Grey’s method
‘The boiling must be violent and short lived’, writes Patience, jerking me out of a reverie.
‘Ten minutes’, she commands.
I remove the pan and pour juice and fruit into clean, warm jars. A teaspoon digs into the steaming viscosity and is gently blown upon to cool it.
A mouth of soft, sweet explosions follows.
I clean the spatters of juice from the tiles, remove the red stains on the work top and wash the pan clean. I turn out the lights and linger awhile in the dark of the night. The moth leaves the wall and flies off into the night jerkily, and all is night quiet save for the owls who still have much to say. Leo has moved a few degrees across the sky.