This year has been weird in that way, here in Northern NM we've had peach, apricot, pear, and apple trees in bloom out of season that I've noticed. I think the chance of getting fruit from these aberrations is pretty much nil though. if you saved the blossoms by covering them during the first cold weather, the tree will be going into dormancy anyway, and unable to mature any fruit. At least you get to enjoy the beautiful color this time of year!

Debbie, I am drooling over that last one esp. Thanks for sharing the recipes, I will make the cobbler when (if) the neighbor shares her plums with me. I love plum tarts and such. My German grandmother used to make plum dumplings served warm with cinnamon sugar and browned butter---yum!! There is a wonderful French bakery with lovely tarts & such right down the road...:-) My weakness. -Becky

Glad you enjoyed it! Mmmm - that sounds yummy!! If your in the Westminster area soon, got tons more of it for a little while longer ;^D Marj

Wood - the Sarton book was "The House by the Sea" which was written when she was older and had moved away from the small town where she had lived. As I mentioned before, I found it to be an interesting meditation on life... I have put Maeve Binchy to the side for right now (temporarily) and in its place picked up "The Understudy" by David Nicholls (he who wrote "Starter for Ten" and "One Day" which I know other RPers have read)... "The Understudy" is another winner. A good plot involving an English superstar actor, his understudy (the hero of the book), and his friendship with both the star and his wife. Great fun to read -- one of those rare books which suck you in and he has his characters doing things that you (i.e. me) would do. For example, the protagonist is in his agent's run-down office and is sitting on a chair with the yellow foam sticking out and he has to remind himself not to pick at the foam... Maybe not the best example, but I honestly felt that I had known his characters by the end of the book. Anyway, if you like his other work, you'll like this one. (Also found out that David Nicholls was one of the creators of the tv series Rescue Me which has a great sly sense of humour in it...) Then picked up a NF book about extreme weather events, but the author has such a drive to talk about his agenda and take on global warming, that "everything" is put into "quotation marks" and it gets a bit "irritating" after a while. Additionally, he sucks the "interesting" out of any of the weather situations he talks about. How can you make a tornado boring? I don't know, but he does. Not too sure what to read next... but isn't that half the fun of reading?