Serviceberries

 


Some years I don't get around to picking the serviceberries. I could have been forgiven for not doing so this year, since I was focused on the cherries, not to mention work. But I had just read Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry (thanks to the Lucky Day shelf at the library), and so they were very much on my mind. I had read her Braiding Sweetgrass when I was up at Wintermoon Summmersun, and I was thinking about that, and thinking about weeping while listening to the funeral for Melissa and Mark Hortman earlier today, and thinking about Brutus eating the "nom-noms" — and so I simply could not leave these special fruits on the tree.

This serviceberry is one of the trees at Summit that have a very special place in my heart, as well as the aforementioned cherry, and the japanese lilacs, and of course the magnolias in front. And I love the sense of foraging for food and what I can make from what I pick. Last night Reggie and Kristen brought over cherry gin they had made from infusing the pits from the sour cherries they had picked, and it was so good. It's these things that we make ourselves that seem so special.

And so I'll make a serviceberry cake (probably over at Ashland because the ovens here are on the struggle bus), and pit some cherries and maybe make some cherry gin, and think about the giving economy (you really should read that book) and those that participate in it.

A lot of thoughts for half an hour picking serviceberries...

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