First, meet my little garden buddy, McKay. He’s our cute, smart, hilarious two-year old. He’s fun to have along in the garden, although I often need to clean up the messes he makes, like today, when I swept the sidewalk off after he shoveled dirt all over it from a nearby flowerbed. But no problem, really. I mean, who could get mad at a face like this???

All right, on to the cherries. I don’t know why, but one of my cherry trees is ripe before the other this year, and it’s about 10 days early. We usually see these ripen around the beginning of July, sometimes right at the Fourth of July, which is nice and festive. These are ‘Lapins’ cherries, which is French for rabbit. It signifies how fruitful they are, and believe me, they’ve clearly been fruitful this year! Many of the branches are bending over sharply under the weight of all the fruit. Probably another reason for the ‘Lapins’ name is that these cherries are fairly unique in being self-fruitful — you don’t have to plant a different variety nearby for pollenization like with most cherries (finicky things!).

Every year, when I pick the cherries, I spot check for worms (western fruit fly larvae) by cutting a bunch open. This is the best year yet — I cut open six or seven and saw no signs of worms at all, so as far as I’m concerned, they’re all good, and I’m just going to eat them! I did spray them with Malathion, but I only had to do it twice, since it’s been such a cool, wet June and I think the fruit flies haven’t been very active.