Plum Gone

In July '07 Lizzie and Josh picked the delicious plums from my reine-claude (greengage) tree and the next morning, as if by magic, these jars of yummy jam appeared.

This year, Henny went over to the house, basket in hand, to pick plums. She'd seen them ripening, but curiously now there were hardly any. Within a couple of days, all the leaves went brown and the beautiful tree died. (It's the one you see in blossom on an earlier blog). I was very sad. As a city girl without green thumbs and so little time to garden at LFH, I automatically think it's my neglect when things go. My poor tree.

The next day, J de P and I decided to investigate what had taken the tree so quickly. He pulled at a big branch. We were both rather shocked when it came off in his hand, the inside crawling with critters. A quick consultation with Lizzie over the fence: get rid of it as soon as possible. I'm not jittery about termites, not much. Henny called the terminator with a chainsaw, in this case, Hans.

Thankfully Hans didn't notice any evidence of the dreaded t-word, but he did say whatever blight the tree suffered from looked like it was getting the two smaller plum trees as well. What a shame. I had some of the plum jam on my bread this morning and thought wistfully about the tree it came from. Good-bye dear friend.

Now we have an empty corridor, a perfect place to put my dream pool, which at this point would require a lotto win. Perhaps a boules pitch?