There’s a fountain in our garden, the drops form a triad of continuous music, one drop that hits the water, one that hits the grass and one that hits the paving stones keep playing together.
There’s a wind-chime in our copper-beech. Six carefully baritone tuned pipes sounds softly, one after another.
There’s a dog under the birch-tree. Snoring the midday heat away.
There’s a charming husband high in our cherry tree, collecting everything out of my reach.
There’s a pick up truck in our yard as our oldest son arrives with more sugar for the cherry jam.
In the middle of this am I. Standing at a garden table, tanning my back in the sun, pitting cherries. Bucket after bucket.
I am content. I am happy.
Indexyourlife 
I want to be there with you in your sunny garden right now! I would love to be standing with you at your garden table, basking in the sun, pitting cherries and talking…setting the world right with our words! There is nothing better than being surrounded by those you love, enjoying the bounty that you have grown in your own garden. Don’t you love the preparation of fruit that allows you to enjoy that summer taste in the middle of winter? Lanny and I never actually planned it this way, but it turns out that our fruit trees become ripe, one after the other. Starting in May we have our cherries, (or at least the ones we manage to get to before the birds have their feast!) then the little yellow plums in June. In early July the peaches are ripe and a couple of weeks after that the BEST nectarines in the world start ripening and last for a few weeks. (We didn’t give them the name of “the BEST nectarines in the world”, that is what all our friends call them, and there was an eating frenzy at our house this year, when we had a bumper crop. Not a one made it into a pie or a cobbler, they were gobbled up too fast!) For the month of August we enjoy our huge elephant plums starting off crisp and tart, and now mellowing into a soft, crimson sweet bliss! (Called elephant plums because they are HUGE!!) We have bags of these, cut in half, pitted, in the freezer, waiting for Thanksgiving pies and winter cobblers! Our Nashi (Chinese pears) are just now getting ripe and in about a week we will start picking bartlet pears. This year the tree is so full that we had to build a scaffolding around it to hold up the branches! I am already dreaming of baked pears, pear torta, pear clafouti, and best of all pear liqueurs! Then by the end of August, our figs will be ripe. The tree is still young and does not yet produce much, but the taste is sublime! They usually get eaten straight from the tree, warm from the sun! ( When I eat them, I always think of my mother and how every year she would make jars and jars of ruby red fig jam. No one else could make is so good! I have looked for, but could not find her recipe, so I think it was one of those things she made from her own, special cooking instinct.) Then in the autumn we have the gravenstine apples and the granny smiths. We planted a new pink lady apple tree this year, and got rewarded with 8 apples growing already! In November the limes ripen and we give away bags and bags of these. We slice them thin and freeze them and then enjoy them all year to flavor water and other drinks. And then at the very end of the year, just in time to tuck into Christmas stockings we have our sweet, sweet, oranges!! This year, our house sitter and friends will be enjoying those oranges because we will be having a Norwegian Christmas, and experiencing new taste treats…Lanny has one request, he want to sample some cloud berry jam and cloud berry liqueur! Both he and I are convinced that anything with the name of cloud berry HAS to be heavenly in taste! I did not intend to write more than a quick note to you, but I guess your post got me excited and inspired. I think I will go and make myself an elephant plum smoothie!! I think of you every day, Jane
Hi Jane and hi Solveig. Solveig, Jane just sent me over here to read the comment she has left on your post today. Thank you Jane for reminding me of your wonderful garden. It is the time for harvesting and kindered spirits as we are Solveig, we have both been blogging about our gardens and the picking of berries today 🙂 By the way, Terje is out again, picking more berries, this time an albino red currant, with white berries. Some years we make white jelly, but this year it will go into the freezer and will be made into juice later with black currants. Terje has made 21 jars of black currant marmelade today, and he has started the process of making red currant jelly.
Jane, we do have some cloudberry liqueur left for you to taste, and on Christmas Eve there will be cloudberry cream for dessert…..and probably cloudberry jam on the Christmas Day breakfast table 🙂 We have no time to pick cloudberries in the mountains around Trondheim this year, the season is NOW, but we do have plans to search for them in Lofoten next week.
Safe travels!
What a lovely, sweet and delightfully long comment Jane! I so look forward to sharing everything Christmassy with you! I must warn you that cloudberries are an aquired taste though! well, I LOVE them, and buy cloudberry jam whenever we truly deserve a breakfast treat!
Solveig, those cherries! That dog! This post is contentment personified. Thank you 🙂
It is lovely to stop, listen, see, smell and feel, and make it all part of counting one’s blessings! I believe savouring those perfect days of contentment gives extra strength to the days where the blessings are not so easy to spot!
As you do in your stories, the time to stop and stare!