A Good Year for Plums

How can the Crankies tell that the local sandplums are maybe over-performing? Could it be the hordes of people they've never seen before standing across the fence from Uncle Michael's cattle, plinking globular fruit into plastic buckets? Maybe because there's no Sure-Jell to be found in two counties. Sorry, but if you want it, you've got to be on site when the One Thing Needful comes off the truck at Walmart. Consider this phenomenon: even  the Crankies' friend I'm Adorable, But Don't Piss Me Off was drawn out of jam retirement when her offspring gifted her with produce she couldn't ignore. The Crankies know this because her jam jars had been in their basement for two years, and she needed to borrow some back. This is a legendary epoch in the annals of Cranky Homeland sandplums.

And none too soon. Prunus angustifolia has taken on the chin for the last two seasons. Alternating drought, flood, and late frost effectively obliterated them from the landscape. Sure, the thickets were still there, thorny and full of chiggers, just like normal. But they were completely naked, like the shelves of a Soviet-era grocery store. The sandplums of Cranky Homeland are now redeeming themselves and, in appreciation, the locals are submitting to all measure of discomfort (heat, bugs, dirt, dangerously friendly Angus cows)  to gather them up. People who live where streets are paved may be muttering, oh jeez, how hard could it be? It's just fruit, for the love of Mike. Tell that to the Crankies' Cousin Winogene. When presented with a pint of plum jam as a hostess gift years ago, Winogene began manifesting PTSD symptoms, twitching slightly as she flashed back to the hot, itchy thickets of her youth. Meta Cranky palmed the jar, and Winogene's heart rate returned to normal.

With family, friends, and liberal application of insecticide, the Crankies revelled in a Hallmark-card-quality fruit-gathering expedition. They attribute the success of their grand day out to the local knowledge and strong chi of their fellow fruit-gatherers, who not only identified the perfect spot, but thoughtfully laid in the correct degree of cloud cover. The Crankies' expedition had more plums and fewer mosquitoes per square foot than any plum-related outing in Meta Cranky's plumming career. Did anyone crawl over a fence and rip her pants? Nope. Fall off the back of the truck into sandburrs? Again, nope. Step in cow plop and subject the party to reeking automobile all the way home? Not this time. Cranky 2 photographed the cow product to remind her friends not to step in it; write this technique into the protocols, because apparently, it works.

Friends and neighbors are busily inserting plum smoosh into little jars and storing the product in the back of their pantries, a huge additional outlay of time and energy. Why all this industry for jam? How much toast can they eat in Cranky Hometown, anyway? Meta Cranky thinks that it's not just about the toast; it's about being in the presence of generosity and bounty. With nothing to work with but sand, sun, and water, Prunus angustifolia has produced an extravagant crop. Confidently, it put out its inventory in the face of searing temperatures, a nasty Gulf oil spill, and an underperforming economy. In a rather mean summer, the sandplums are doing something confident and impressive. Who doesn't want a piece of that action?
--MC