A Tale of Cherries, Cockatoo's and a Crazy Lady

About 15 years ago Mr. P staggered home from the local pub one night  and when he woke up the next morning there was a stick embedded in our front lawn. Nobody knows how it got there and it was simply assumed Mr. P had fallen into a tree during his walk home, (a regular occurrence or so I believe in those days )  broke the branch off, used it as a walking stick to make it home and decided to poke it into the earth on his way up the driveway in an effort to commune with the idea of gardening.

Before you get all up in my business because my husband was out destroying nature in a drunken stupor,  despite all the odds the stick took root and survived the next 5 years without being watered unless it rained. It grew taller and occasionally developed leaves. It looked weedy and struggled to survive and nobody loved it or paid any attention to it.

Then I moved in and informed Mr. P that we had pop up sprinklers (I kid you not despite having lived in this house for 7 years before my arrival he seriously had no idea we had an automatic watering system) and forthwith the lawn and trees would be watered when the government would permit us to use our own sprinkler system .  And despite the silver birch on our front lawn turning up it's toes and dying (which is very common with silver birch trees I understand so please don't call me a murderess ) the green tree survived and every year  after that grew taller, produced lovely green leaves and looked very pretty in summer.

Three years after my arrival I noticed red berries on the tree with the advent of summer.  Mr. P was righteously amazed when I excitedly  announced that they were cherries and that three years of tending to that tree in a proper fashion had rewarded us with the bright red plump berries. I made big plans to harvest the berries several days hence and started planning a cherry pie, and dreamed of the luscious cherry feast we could have because the harvest was small but looked oh so delicious.

Unfortunately we were not the only ones coveting the berries. A family of cockatoos had also spied them and were also waiting for them to ripen.  And ripen they did , in a two hour time frame one day when I was at work. And when I got home the tree was stripped because the cockatoos told all their friends and word spread like wildfire and every cockatoo in Australia had a feast from my meagre harvest of cherries that day.

I didn't get mad. I planned my revenge.

"Next year",  I ranted to Mr. P - "at the first sight of cherries I am going to throw a fruit net over the tree and guard those cherries most zealously until ripening time" A net was duly bought and I waited a whole year for the cherries to come. But they didn't appear the next year or the year after that or the year after that. I was crestfallen.

In the meantime I read up on cherries and realised by some fluke of nature our tree had been pollinated the year the cherries came to visit. I don't know how and I don't know why , and in the end I realised that this was one of those once in a lifetime dealios and that never again would we be graced by the red berries on our tree. So I gave the net away , and put my dreams of home made home grown  home made cherry pie out of my head.

 And this year my cherry tree turned on such a spring show - it was magical.

7 years have passed since the last cherry sighting at Maison Pyjamas. So you can imagine my excitement when this week these appeared on the tree...

There are hundreds of them...

And those bastard birds are back...and they're already stripping the tree.

So I've got me a swag

And a scare the birds away tool..

And this is where I'm staying until MY cherries are safely in a bowl in my kitchen.

Feel free to stop by for Cockatoo Cherry Pie on Sunday if you're in the vicinity. I promise I'll put the gun away.  


P.S. I guess I could race out and buy another net but that wouldn't be half as much fun and wouldn't make anywhere near as good a tale to tell would it?