How wonderful that you have both older and younger trees to harvest right there in your garden! Cherry season is one of my very favorite seasons. Our family is picnicing tomorrow, and cherries are on the menu. :)

My mother’s cherry dishes that I inherited. Good for later in the year when the real thing comes in a can. Carol

My family farm had a couple of cherry trees when I was small. They were a bit tart, but not tart enough to stop you from wanting to eat them off the tree. Made amazing pie and jam.

I love this, Melissa. I love your dishes Carol.

Carol, I like your dishes, too. I love good china. Intwilight, aren't fruit trees great? It sounds like you had pie cherries, and they are wonderful; I'm glad you wrote in about them. Our pies are amazing, too. Sheila, thank you!

The birds love cherry season here :) -- I planted three sweet cherry trees and one Hungarian pie cherry, the Balaton cherry (see here). However, even though the trees are thoroughly netted the birds find a way to pick the trees bare. I don't really mind as I figure that is the birds' payment for being on bug patrol seven days a week, all day long during the growing season. They do an excellent job! Cherry trees are lovely too -- their early bloom is something I look forward to each year.

Nice post, rosesmi. I hope one day you get to enjoy some of your cherries in spite of the birds: perhaps when they're more mature and are simply producing greater quantities of fruit?

I don't know what our local pie cherry is, always the same variety, I suspect a Montmorency type, but who knows. It's always the same kind. I wrote a long letter this morning to my sister, in which I detailed my plans for growing every kind of fruit that is suitable to our soil and climate, and needs no particular care. Perhaps I should add Balaton cherry to my list of plants to look into.

For breakfast this morning I had cherry pie, made from some of the fruit we gathered several days ago, pitted, and froze until my daughter's return from university. However, the abandoned orchard we picked the cherries from is abandoned no longer: Friday as we passed by it I saw that someone has been cleaning it up. Good for the grove, and I hope the cleaners-up get plenty of fruit from it; not so good for us. We'll have to put more effort into growing our own pie cherries.

Are your sweet cherries on a dwarfing rootstock? I find it kind of hard to imagine netting a full-sized sweet cherry. I think the usual practice locally is to let sweet cherries reach the size nature designed them to be.