It’s Raining Plums

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The plum trees ripened all at once—pouring hundreds of pounds of fruit onto the earth before I could get to it. I spent half a day with my parents and daughter de-pitting, freezing, and making jam. It didn’t even make a dent in the abundance.

And now it’s on to the blackberries.

A new morning ritual has emerged – a half-hour picking berries at sunrise – and I still can’t keep up. They’re literally falling from the vines. I’ve been freezing them by the gallon. I can barely remember what my hands looked like before they turned purple.

This place we moved to almost a year ago feels like a little slice of paradise. We are so lucky.

Lately, this abundance has me thinking about the balance between creating and enjoying. Between growing and harvesting.

I dream of building a beautiful garden space where we’ll grow much of our own food—a magical little plant world for our daughter to get lost in. But ironically, in my pursuit of this future vision of abundance, I find myself watching perfectly ripe plums and blackberries fall to the ground.

And I think that’s part of the human condition—or at least this human’s condition. The urge to create and build and grow, without always making space to honor what we’ve already made.

When I sit in the garden and think about this, not surprisingly, photographs come to mind.

Pictures are about helping us enjoy the life we’ve already created.
They are the pause
The noticing
The harvest