Thursday: Hili dialogue, with bonus pictures of her orchard

May 1, 2014 • 3:05 am

Hili is laboring hard on this international holiday:

A: What’s the date today?
Hili: It’s the First of May, Labour Day.

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In Polish:
Ja: Jaką mamy dziś datę?
Hili: Pierwszy maja, Święto Pracy.

***

A reader or two has asked about the cherry trees in Hili’s orchard, which are blooming at this moment. Malgorzata has kindly sent three pictures of the orchard, which has several thousand trees. It’s a pity that I’m not in Poland to see this, but perhaps I’ll be there when the cherries are harvested in the fall. (That, of course, means fresh cherry pies!). The captions are Malgorzata’s:

This is the first day, the orchard is not in full bloom yet:

Picture 1

This is the road to our house when the trees are in full bloom:

Picture 2

And here is a closer look at a blooming tree:

picture 3

15 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue, with bonus pictures of her orchard”

  1. Do you have local labor when it comes time to harvest the cherries, or do they come in from a distance like in much of the US? And does the harvest go mostly as fresh cherries or do they go into jams and other preserved products?

    1. We have local people doing the picking. And we sell them to a plant which deep freezes them and exports most of the harvest. I suppose they go into jams, juices, and cherry cakes.

  2. I wish I could get that kind of floral outburst on my apple trees in Maine. We have a problem that you probably don’t in a large orchard in the midst of agricultural land. Grouse like to sit in the apple trees and peck at flower buds all winter long. The flower buds are of course the big nutritious ones.

    1. Luckily for us no birds are interested in our cherries except for starlings. We have plenty of starlings (I have four nests under our roof) but this is the food of the last choice for them. They love barley and barley is ripe at the same time as cherries. So all our starlings gorge themselves on barley and leave our cherries be.

      1. In Pennsylvania, my pie (“sour”) cherries would all be eaten by birds if I didn’t cover the tree with bird netting. I think the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) is the species that eats most of the cherries. My cherry tree is just starting to bloom now, cherries should be ripe late June. My peach tree is also blooming, and I have to cover it to protect the fruit, not from birds so much as from squirrels (sorry Prof. CC!)

    2. Best place in the US for cherries is northwestern Michigan – around Traverse City. Great place to visit – very beautiful. Particularly during the Cherry Festival in early July.
      https://www.cherryfestival.org/

      These are sour cherries (czeresnie in Polish) – great for baking, not eating. I assume that is what Malgorzata has in her orchard. In 2012, a warm winter followed by a late frost wiped out Michigan’s cherry crop and American producers were running around Poland buying all they could. 2013 was a strong crop and it looks like these year will be as well.

      You can get frozen or dried cherries from Michigan online. If you head out to western Michigan in July, you can get some fresh ones for a couple of weeks.

      I don’t really understand the climate and topographic reasons why, but western Michigan, close to Lake Michigan has great fruits and vegetables. I think the soil is somewhat sandy. They get much more snow than Chicago and other places on the western side of Lake Michigan. Winters are long and cold. I guess that makes it a good place to grow fruits and vegetables.

  3. Harvest will be in … more like July, right? At least that’s when they come ripe in the Pacific Northwest and in France …

  4. (That, of course, means fresh cherry pies!)

    And further threats to Jerry’s waistline. Terrible!

  6. I noticed the iron fence and gate in Monday’s Hili dialogue in which she was gazing out the window. It seems also bordered, in part, by a beautiful hedge. Do you have it fenced all the way around? What or whom do you mostly need to keep out?

    Thank you so much for sharing your life, home, thoughts, beautiful orchard, noms, and of course, Hili. And thank you for taking such good care of Jerry!

    1. Yes, our garden is fenced off. There are deers, foxes and dogs all around, but we had it fenced off mostly to keep our own dogs in. They were two big dogs and it was not advisable (nor allowed) to let them roam the village free.

      Taking care of Jerry was a pleasure. And he washed all dishes!

  7. LABOR Day??? I would think cats wouldn’t think much of a day honoring labor.

  8. The cherry orchard is beautiful, and obviously well-loved and in harmony with the place where it grows. I am imagining Hili and Fitness playing among all those flowers…

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