Once upon a time there was a plum tree in the far southwest corner of our backyard in Texas that produced as many plums as a small orchard. When I left our newly acquired house on Worsham Street the first week in May, 2010 to return to South Carolina, the light green plums on the tree were the size of large olives. I picked one and tasted it because I believed they might be gone before I returned for my next visit. It was bitter as gall, hard as the pit of one of those large olives it resembled. I quickly spit it out and sighed. I longed for the sweet, soft, purple plums of my childhood from our tree in Richards. How could the eighteen miles from Richards where I grew up to our home in Montgomery sixty-four years later make such a difference in plums from a random plum tree in the yard? Maybe it was more than time or distance.
When I returned to our Worsham Street house in Texas from South Carolina a month later, I couldn’t wait to check on my plum tree. To my astonishment, the plums had matured and changed. The first thing I noticed was the fallen ones collected in a heap around the trunk of the tree. I peered closer to see they were a deep red color the way I remembered they should be, but they were the size of golf balls which wasn’t exactly what I recalled. They were in varying stages of decomposition, obviously food for worms and birds that shared our back yard. Then I looked up.
The tree appeared to be at least twenty feet tall with limbs growing awkwardly in all directions. Several branches were entwined in a wire dangling from a utility pole across the fence in a neighbor’s yard. The tree occupied a corner where four yards in our neighborhood met, and its branches hung down with reckless abandon, no regard for boundaries. The branches were thick with kelly green leaves that tried to hide the fruit, but that was a lost cause. Hundreds of plums filled the tree. Seeing those plums in changing stages of ripeness froze me in my tracks. I stared at my “crop” and stepped back into a time, to a place where a little girl ran through her yard and tasted plums from a tree for the first time. Her delight was the same as mine was today. I pulled a limb closer and smelled a scent more powerful than candles of the same name. I picked one of the larger red ones, took a bite that was as sweet as its aroma. The skin broke easily to release a gush of juice that was decidedly the nectar of the gods; it must’ve been, since I was in plum paradise.
Every day the plums multiplied. I picked them in the morning before the hot summer Texas heat made the outdoors unbearable. I picked the ones from the lower branches that I could reach without a ladder. One morning Jon, my next-door neighbor, came over and climbed a ladder to drop the ones from the upper limbs to me while I stayed safely on the ground. I gave him some as a thank you gesture. I filled a plastic grocery bag to give it to the neighbors living on the other side of us. I took plums to the women who lived in two houses across the street. I took plums to my mother’s caregivers in Houston. I gave plums to the men who came to work on our air conditioner. I gave plums to the cable guy who adjusted kinks in our cable connections. When my cousin Frances and her husband Lee came for a visit, I sent plums home with them. I considered giving them to strangers walking their dogs past my house. I had to get larger baskets to hold the plums I picked because I couldn’t give them away fast enough. That plum tree was a fruit-producing fool.
Jon and I discussed the need for a new plan for the prolific plums. With the help of his computer, he researched the possibilities in cyberspace and determined we should make plum jelly. I scoffed at the idea, reminding him I hate to cook. That was the first problem. Secondly, I had visions of my grandmother in her kitchen making plum jelly fifty years ago. The images were fuzzy, but I remembered her sweating over a hot stove in a steaming kitchen for a long time. I didn’t like that picture, and I tried to discourage Jon from the project. He was convinced we should give it a try. I was wavering when I made the mistake of telling my first cousin James Paul who lived less than an hour from me in Navasota about the idea. He immediately jumped on the jelly bandwagon and told me he remembered my Aunt Mildred’s recipe. Not only remembered it, but he had the very pots and pans his mother used when she made her jelly. It couldn’t be that hard, he went on to say. I was outnumbered, and the plums kept piling higher on my kitchen counter.
********************
Please stay tuned for Part 2 of the Plum Adventures.
I'll Call It Like I See It 