Our neighbour who hates us (stay tuned for THAT story) has an enormous plum tree in her yard.
The first year we lived here, I don't think it fruited because I feel that even *I*, whose ironic nickname is "Sherlock Rose", would have noticed a shit ton of plums falling on our lawn, if only because Pumbaa would have tried to eat them.
The second year, there were plums but not a CRAZY amount of plums and also, she now hated us, so I didn't bother to pick them and just let the few that were on our side of the fence fall into the garden, until our landscaper pointed out that they might attract rodentia, at which point I gathered them up and composted them.
This year...there are a crazy amount of plums. And, unlike last year, several heavily laden branches are fully in our yard. And I tasted one and it was pretty good.
I wanted to pick the plums. They were on our side. They were inaccessible to her even if she got on a ladder and leaned over the fence. If I didn't pick them, they would just fall and rot in the garden. One could argue they were our plums.
Even if the law might be on our side, I didn't want to pick the plums while our neighbour who hates us was home. The tree is adjacent to her back balcony, where she occasionally hangs out.
We reached a détente after the events of last year and I didn't want to spoil the delicate peace by shaking her own plum tree in her face.
I kept poking my head out the front door, like a fucking gopher popping out of its burrow, to check if her truck was in her driveway (no one uses their garages for their cars here except for us, it's so weird).
Is it plum time yet? How about now? OMG LADY, JUST LEAVE THE HOUSE FOR 15 MINUTES.
Our neighbour who hates us often works from home (because, I learned before she hated us, she doesn't get along with her co-workers, HAHAHAHAHAHA THE FLAG IS SO RED THO) But she's an active person who goes out and does things, so I was sure I'd be able to find a time when she was gone to get my hands on those plums.
It took 4 days.
I had just finished my French lesson, where I told my teacher the whole story about the neighbour who hates us (gripping, apparently, even in my halting French, we went overtime) and I poked my plum gopher head out the front door and saw that she had finally left the premises.
"It's PLUM TIME, BITCHES!" I yelled at Katr as I cruised through the living room on my way out the back. "Good luck!" she called after me.
I grabbed a bucket, almost died vaulting over the garden Pumbaa-barrier into the bunny grass and made it to the heavily laden tree. Ripe? Not ripe? Basically, if it wasn't actively rotting, it went into the bucket. The bucket was almost full when I heard her balcony door open.
Fuck! Fuck!
Then I heard her 20 year old son's voice, calling for their cat who likes to come drink out of our bird bath and shit beneath the magnolia. I knew that if he saw what I was doing, he wouldn't say anything TO me but he seems like a narc.
Fortunately, I was mostly done and the tree's canopy covered me until I could emerge in a different part of the garden, using my prodigious bulk to hide my bucket of purloined plums.
Guys. I got a bucket of plums.
It was a lot of plums, guys.
What the fuck am I going to do with all these plums?
I wanted to make a plum duff, because it sounds fun and rhymes with "Creampuff" but I looked up the recipe and the first ingredient was "suet."
So I started with this plum almond cake.
It was a TINY bit over done on the bottom but otherwise very moist and tasty, light, not too sweet.
A couple of days after the great plum heist, Katr noticed something weird about the plum tree -- one of the branches was broken. I took a closer look and saw that TWO of the branches were broken, which kind of explains why so much of the tree was practically in our yard.
"You should take a photo and text her," said Katr, a normal person who is nice.
"Counterpoint," I said, "I do NOT text her, we wait until winter when all the leaves fall off and she notices it herself."
"No," said Katr, "because we are people who do the right thing."
Sigh.
So I took some photos of the broken part of the tree, as far away as I could so that she wouldn't accuse me of taking pictures of HER YARD, and sent them to her and her son with a friendly "Heads up, your tree is fucked up, you might not be able to see it from your side" note and she actually responded "Thx", so Katr, you are probably right AGAIN, shut up.
And now, another scintillating 50x50 update:
New recipes: 5 (includes that plum cake!)
Vegetarian meals: 39
Board game plays: 17
5KM walks: 20
Blog posts: 11
