Umm, well, actually the Gatherer. Just got in from the Seward Street slides, about which i’ve written on several occasions. This time my objective was to try to catch those two plum trees when they were still covered with ripe fruit, bribe one of the surly teenagers who routinely hang around nearby smoking things to climb up in the tree and pick me a bagful of the plums so i can come back here and make, for the delectation of the multitudes, Wild Seward Street Plum Jam.
Got there too late last year, as the trees had been stripped, but oh, did i ever hit it perfect this year. The ground was covered with fallen fruit, almost all of which was mushy at best, but the bushes beneath the trees cushioned the fall of the fruit there and left it unspoiled. So from them i got a couple of quarts in short order and stopped because i didn’t want to be greedy and get more than i needed for a small batch of the jam, and yes, another factor in my stopping so soon was fear of being caught by the Wicked Witch, of whom i’ve also written.
To be frank, i don’t think these plums are going to be winning any foodie prizes, but they’re good, and i sure do like the idea of making a windfall jam of them.
Here’s the tree.
And my haul. BTW, they’re only about an inch in diameter, and i got that shot above using the 20x zoom.
Gloria’s arriving this afternoon for a few days, and won’t she be excited to be put to work in the kitchen.
Note: Actually, Gloria pitched in like a trooper and is largely responsible for the removal of the pits from the jam. Since the little plums were so small, i decided it would be less trouble to pick the pits out of the jam once it was cooked. I was wrong. And if it had been left up to me, you’da hadta just spit the pits out as you were eating the jam.
Look for it in the 2012 Production Report under the code SFPAL on 13 July.