Well, I can't really help much further I'm afraid. Cherry red is not a variety we grow here as far as I know. But your description matches most red currants. White currants are the same species as red (Ribes rubrum syn. sativum) but bred for a different colour. There are also a few varieties of pink currants. Black currants are a different species (Ribes nigrum). Do you have more than one red currant bush? And are they all behaving the same? My only guess is that you have been sold a mislabelled variety. I can't think of any other reason why 'red' currants should not be red. Even when they fail to fill out or shrivel on the strig they are still red. Red currants keep well on the bush and can hang for 2 or 3 weeks as long as the birds don't get them. So if the berries are starting to disintegrate and are still not red I don't think they can be red currants. Have you tasted the berries? If you have not grown currants before you may not be expecting such a tart berry, which red/white currants are. They never get as sweet as, for example, a raspberry or strawberry. They also taste quite different from black currants. We had a mix of red and blackcurrant compote this evening and they need quite a bit of sugar. The only white currants I have had were not, to my mind, as good as red. But I haven't really given them a fair trial. Here is a link that might be useful: Red currant info.

My neighborhood is brand new with the oldest parts being about two years old and the youngest still being built (annoying!), and it's absolutely filled the the brim with outside people of all ages. Lots of dog walkers and thin, jogging women in the morning. Stay at home moms with their strollers in the afternoons and early evenings and kids everywhere. Oh, the kids! Seriously, we had so many trick or treaters last year that the ten huge bags of candy I bought for them was gone in two hours. (My husband was a bit generous in handing it out though... "when we run out, we can turn off the light." lol) Not a whole lot of gardening though, we have mostly landscaped yards, but more and more you see new odds and ends making their way into people's yards. There's one man around the corner from me who has a giant yellow austin rose in his front garden that is just magnificent. He prunes it down after every flush and when it blooms... WOW! I'm not totally sure which yellow austin that it is, because I haven't had the guts to walk up and ask yet. I'd be shocked if it were something else. There are a couple of other roses in the neighborhood, hybrid teas, I'd guess. Most people take good care of them, but a couple don't prune and those suckers and clearly eight feet tall and very thin. Eh. My yard is ridiculous. lol. I'm surprised the yard police haven't gotten on to me yet about my cottage-y garden in the front where everyone can see it. Ha! I got out there a little early to prune and tidy everything up so it's looking pretty good now. I am happy to report though, that after I did SEVERAL of my neighbors were out the very next day working on their own front gardens. Yay!

I found it a little surprising as well. All we hear about is how cold the weather is for tomatoes but never that its too warm. I've grow tomatoes before but outside in the garden. They didn't get much love and if I got a good crop it is a nice surprise. Growing them in a greenhouse for the first time this year was... educational. :) By the end of the summer my husband was saying "hot is good!" and I was saying "NO, it needs to be cooler!" Something else you might be interested to know is that high temperatures also affect pollination. So you know those warms summers where we all expect to get tons of tomatoes and then they set fruit late??? Its because its TOO warm. lol Apparently the "viability" of tomato pollen greatly depreciates if not turning sterile in temperatures of 90F (32C). Go figure!!!

When I was a child Dad bought me three rabbits, a buck and two does. We put them in the chicken coop. In a year we had 119 bunnies, and that didn't count the ones we ate, we gave away, etc. I never did manage to sell one, no one here wants a bunny. You literally cannot give them away, then or now. Dad finally opened that door and let them go. When the boys go rabbit hunting at the farm they still get white bunnies, black bunnies, golden bunnies with white feet. They apparently adjusted quite nicely to the habitat because that was at least 40 years ago and their offspring still are everywhere in Norwich Township in spite of the flourishing fox population. And now I have a family of them in the backyard eating my plants. Of course, my theory has always been that if I feed them, I get to eat them, but there's some rule or another about shooting a gun within the city limits. funny, though, if I try to uy dressed rabbit to eat, it's about $5 a pound. We raised them to eat for a while but eventually no one had the stomach to kill them so we quit. I will tell you that you should not put rabbit in a crockpot unless youw atch it carefully. It'll fall apart and then you spent a lot of time picking out all those tiny little bones..... Annie