Pillaging plums

Finally! The plums are ready for picking. A bit beyond ready in a few cases, since some of the fruit had already fallen. I picked a gallon and a half of plums, and have the scratches on my arms to prove it. My hair needed some rearranging too, since plum branches seem to stick out every which way and love snagging in hair, clothes, eyeglasses, etc. It seems the biggest, ripest plums are all clumped just beyond reach, just beyond a tangled mass of dead branches and fallen logs.

The ripe plums will have a pinkish hue to them, so the ones in the above photo still have a week or so to go. This year everything, including wild fruit and garden vegetables, is ripening up to a month later than normal. Plums don't normally bunch up like those in the photo; usually you're lucky to find three or four growing next to each other.

Working in a state park has its benefits. I know where most of the wild fruit and berries grow, and can keep an eye on them as they ripen. It seems no one else is interested in picking wild things, as I often see tons of fruit fallen on the ground. Birds and deer have a field day (literally) in the fall here.

Also ripe at this time are rose hips and wild grapes. I've made both rosehip jelly and wild grape jelly, with mixed results. The rosehip jelly was very tart, and not too much flavor. But rosehips are packed with Vitamin C. The wild grape jelly was so loaded with pectin that the jelly had the consistency of peanut butter, with a nice sweet/sour wild grape flavor. I think I doubled the normal amount of sugar called for in the recipe for domestic grapes.

Below is picture of my plum harvest, plus some wild grapes and a rosehip thrown in. It is such a gorgeous day outside, with the feel of autumn in the air, yet knowing winter is still a month or two (or three, if we're lucky) away. Enough time to finish the harvest, fill up the larder and prepare for the long cold.

Now where did I put those jelly bags ...