Pie Cherries – Reason #357 to love Michigan

I love Michigan. I love living here for many reasons:

• The weather is fine for knitting much of the year,
• Snow lining tree branches is gloriously beautiful,
• Spring ephemerals and flowering trees are a miracle after ice and sleet,
• Fall is crimson, fiery orange, and golden leaves, enjoyed in crisp sunshine and then tossed by moody winds, and
• Summer is grand – sultry, sunny, and replete with yummy local fruit.

The king of local fruit is the sour or tart cherry. The tart cherries are a semi-translucent red, like captured sunlight, which they are. They make the most amazing cherry pie. Oh, and they don’t travel well, so they’re not something that gets hurled across the globe with abandon:  you have to enjoy them right here. And maybe because of that, for me, they’re also connected to memories of other summers and other pies.

I sat on my patio this evening, pitting these cherries with a hairpin, feeling their juice running down my forearm to my elbow. More than most things these days, these cherries are a signal of a particular place and a particular moment in the season.  Slurp in the summertime.

Coming for dessert tonight?