Babs Young has been out and about in the Township paying attention to growing things. She found strong evidence that there will be excellent–and local–treats for us to eat this summer.
Earlier in the spring, you will recall, that was by no means a sure thing. On May Day the orchard was bare. Babs wrote: These trees are getting ready to give us some fruit sometime this summer. Hopefully it will warm up enough for them to blossom . . .
A couple of weeks later the apricot trees up at King Orchards on M-88 bloomed. Things were looking up.
Then Babs found a morel in her garden mulch. She wrote: I have probably found 3 morel mushrooms in my life. This one was in one of my gardens, so I had to photograph her. Here she is, Lady Morel. She was also the one and only morel.
By Memorial Day cherries were in bloom all over the County, and there was local asparagus and rhubarb at the farm markets. Not only that (and this is not a trivial matter) – it seems to have stopped snowing.
I don’t see very many movies these days, but I did see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and I liked it very much, as you might expect. I leave you with this thought (no matter who said it first): Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.
Torch Lake Views 
uphilldowndale
June 5, 2014
I would be delighted to find such afine lady fungi in my garden, surely, if there is one there will be others to follow?
Gerry
June 5, 2014
That’s the thing about morels – you never can tell just when or where they’ll pop up, and they can come in ones and twos or in whole patches. Then they can disappear and never return to that spot again. Thus their great appeal as the object of a Spring Quest. (Well, that and the fact that they taste really good.)
P.j. grath
June 5, 2014
Love the orchards. Love BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD, too. Book recommendation (if you’ve the courage to take on 1400+ pages): A SUITABLE BOY. No cherry trees, but plenty of marigolds.
Gerry
June 5, 2014
Thank you. You’ve never steered me wrong on a book yet. I’ll investigate Suitable Boy.
tootlepedal
June 5, 2014
I am particularly happy for you in regard to the absence of snow. I hope your apples come on well. Ours flowered well but don’t seem to be fruiting.
Gerry
June 6, 2014
I’m a little worried about our apple orchards, too, but the thing that may save us is that we have many “microclimates” Around Here. (It crosses my mind that the “our” and “we” are excessively proprietary for a person who has not a single fruit tree to her name, but that’s the way I feel about the orchards of Antrim County.)
Karma
June 5, 2014
That’s a wonderful thought. I like it, will have to try to incorporate this into my way of thinking. That’s also a pretty wonderful shot of the flowering cherries!
Gerry
June 6, 2014
On behalf of Babs, I thank you. Her work dresses this place up a treat. I find that repeating Patel’s thought to myself helps me to keep moving forward when chaos reigns.
shoreacres
June 5, 2014
Oh, now you tell me you have morels, too. There’s nothing better than a mess of morels. Nothing fancy. Flour, salt, pepper, butter. Yum. I haven’t had one in years, but the sight of one can set me drooling. I’d take morels over ice cream, at least on an occasion or two.
I loved The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I thought it so good I almost bought the DVD so I could watch it again and again. I didn’t, but I still think about it. And I like that little saying. It reminds me of Dame Julian of Norwich, whose phrase was, “And all will be well, and all things will be well…” Isn’t Judi Dench a Dame, also? Surely does give a different twist to, “There is Nothing like a Dame…”
Gerry
June 6, 2014
Oh yes, we have morels. We have so many that there are morel festivals and commercial morel camps and clever children with morel stands by the side of the road. We have so many that I am humiliated by my inability to find more than one or two by myself. (On the other hand, to find one is a big thrill for me.) You would probably like these earlier posts:
The mother of all morels
Can you stand more about morels?
flandrumhill
June 9, 2014
The apple blossoms are on the trees at the edge of the salt marsh here too. Unfortunately, so are the mosquitoes. Swarms of them.
Love the quotation and greatly enjoyed the movie too. I planted marigolds for the first time ever this past week. Thought their yellow-orange color would contrast nicely next to the purple spiderworts.
I’ve never seen a morel. My youngest grandson is always on the hunt for fungi, so if there was one anywhere in the yard, it would have been brought to my attention.
Thanks for the images Barbara and the report Gerry.
Gerry
June 10, 2014
Morels are an excellent treat. I hope that you and the youngest grandson get to try them sometime.
We have swarms of mosquitoes as well. It’s a mystery to me why we don’t have flocks of purple martins taking advantage of the free buffet. I wonder if someone could figure out how to transport whole colonies of martins from place to mosquito-ridden place, as beekeepers do with bees. We would pay good money for such a service Around Here right about now.
Joss
June 10, 2014
I know that quote! Maybe it comes from somewhere else originally, but I definitley remember it from my favourite Bollywood movie, ‘Om Shanti Om’ with Shah Rukh Khan. Wonderful film, like so many others he’s made.
I’m relieved it’s stopped snowing. You seem to have caught right up with us here as we too have rhubarb and asparagus in our farmers’ market and greengrocers. I’m trying to eat seasonally at the moment, and it’s such fun waiting to see what comes into the shops next. I just ignore everything that doesn’t have a union jack on the packaging. Never thought I’d be so nationalistic!
Gerry
June 10, 2014
There you go. A remark I thought brilliant turns out to be commonplace when a person knows its references. But commonplace is good. It’s interesting to me that in the UK Indian foods and films and music are as familiar as Mexican foods and Spanish are in the US. Commonplace is rich and delicious as well as good.
Imagine my delight at Antrim County asparagus and rhubarb–and eggs. I love nice fresh eggs from local free-range chickens. More rich and delicious stuff.