Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Apparently no good deed DOES go unpunished.........

or is the universe upset with me?? 
Today the DD,  #2GS & I went to Spokane to do some school shopping and other errands.  It took most of the day, but we got all his clothes & PE shoes, plus new socks & underwear, too.  He'll be ready to go next Tuesday.
When we got home I had a few chores still to do as 'tP' had fed the chickens and the other critters.  I hung out some laundry and picked up the house a bit, then remembered I needed to water the garden.  While I was out there attending to that chore I thought I'd go over and pick up ripe plums that had fallen so as to save as many as possible.  At the same time I figured I'd check to see if there were more ripe ones that I would pick to avoid them falling.  To my horror and sad surprise it seemed someone had come in and helped themselves to nearly all of the fruit!!!!!  They had to have walked into our backyard and worked for quite some time to do this as there were a very large number of fruit on the tree - in fact some of the branches had so many they looked like bunches of large grapes.  So it would have taken quite a bit of time to do this.  It was obviously not a 'prank' as there were not any smashed or wasted fruits on the ground and just ripe ones were gone - most of the crop!  There's still a few green ones left on the tree. 
How can anyone be so sneaky and down-right nasty?  Surely if they had wanted them they could have asked.  There's prune trees growing in the city right of way a few streets over that can be had for the picking if one wants them, too. 
I am severly disappointed (& I guess I should say AGAIN)  in people.  Where have all the nice ones gotten off to that such a thing could occur in a nice small town like this?

5 comments:

Kathy said...

How can anyone live with "himself" knowing he has taken what rightfully belongs to another. I'm sorry for your loss. I just can't imagine anyone doing such a cheeky thing. Obviously the perpetrator was confident you would be away for a while.

I checked our plum trees last week. We usually pick them in October. I don't know much about plums. These are small. The crop will not be as large as some years.

Hang in there . . .

drMolly, the BeanQueen said...

Well, apparently I was somewhat wrong as when I went to check in the daylight (was out right before dusk last night) I found many broken branches and the plums picked up about "kid height" but at least they weren't smashed all over the ground. There are about one third of the crop left in the higher branches. But still, what ever happened to teaching your children not to take that which is not yours.

I'd say, Kathy, that yours are Italian prune-plum types that don't get ripe until later. Mine have a bit of that in their background, but still ripen earlier like other european plums.

Kathy said...

The update is only marginally better than the original situation. It probably was kids but still very long and significantly impacts what you expected to harvest.

When I was little, my dad used to can Italian prunes, but I never knew where they came from. Grandma Ina also speaks of "prunes." We have quite a stand of "prune" trees in a gully south of the house, but there won't be much fruit to harvest this year.

drMolly, the BeanQueen said...

Yes, there used to be a lot more prune-plums around as there was a big market for dried fruit. When I was a kid on my folk's farm there was an old prune orchard next door - there had been a prune dryer down the road in the 30-40's - and we used to go over there & get all the prunes we wanted. My mom had asked the neighbor if it was OK and we loved her dried prunes. Plus, she also used to can a lot of them. We lived on much of the food my mon & us girls put up over the summer. Although my dad had a good job (he has a college degree and was, at end of his career, the management forester for SW Washington state) when one has 7 children and a stay-at-home mom (weren't they all then anyway most) it takes a lot of food, LOL.

Kathy said...

My parents put up a lot of food in the '50s when my half-siblings were teenagers, and I decided that having many mouths to feed was the reason. In the '60s, when it was mostly the three of us, they stopped canning altogether. But, you know -- I think canned goods from the store were fairly inexpensive at that time. My dad grew excellent sweet corn, though, and we continued to process it for freezing until he was unable to grow it. We would love to grow corn again, but there are factors -- the need to protect the crop from the deer and the hot, dry conditions.

drMolly, the BeanQueen