Peach Season

I breakfasted on peaches today. Again. Snacks and desserts, too. Almost by definition, peach season is a moment of indulgence and excess.

Unlike apples and pears, mulberries and blueberries, strawberries and grapes, the peaches ripen all at once. For weeks they’re almost ready. Picture perfect. Colorful. Swollen with sunshine. But a gentle touch, fingertips against furry skin, quickly curtails my attempt to harvest prematurely. Too firm. Not ready. Yet.

And then, suddenly, it’s peach season. All at once, the fruit have grown heavy with sweet syrup, so heavy that they begin to fall from branches into the grassy orchard.

We fill hods, bowls, and baskets. But deer and wild turkeys and raccoons devour plenty nevertheless. Such is the abundance mindset of yours truly. Some for me; some for you. (Susan, however, has begun to get a little testy when fresh fruit and vegetables destined for her plate get spirited off by others!)

Peach slices and banana slices for breakfast yesterday. Peaches sliced over muesli this morning. Or, at least, that was the plan. But after rinsing and patting the fruit dry, I lifted it to my mouth and took a big, juicy bit without realizing what I was doing. Too late. I couldn’t stop after that first bite. Peachy perfection permeated my tastebuds as I enjoyed a second bite, eating over the sink because the juice was flowing, controllable, irresistible. Ambrosia! Bite after bite I savored the almost impossibly flavorful flesh of the tree ripened fruit, wondering whether winter peaches, even those carefully hand selected at market, could ever approximate this gustatory gratification.

This is the height of peach season, but the journey began months ago in springtime when blossoms flush with possibility avoided frosts and hale.

Orchardist observes,
pink petals uncurl crimson,
and spring swaggers in.

— Geo Davis, "Peach Blossoms Haiku" (Source: Peach Blossoms)

I invite you to meander a moment in Rosslyn’s orchard. This spectacular-but-brief blooming period of the peach trees serves as a natural reminder to appreciate fleeting moments of beauty in our lives. Let’s learn from the peach blossoms, if we can. (Source: Peach Blossoms)

From blossoms to baby fruit to bigger fruit… the slow progress of peach season instills patience and anticipation.

Our peach trees are setting fruit… [and] I’m guardedly optimistic that we may actually be able to sink our teeth into a few fuzzy, nectar-sweet peaches soon. (Source: Holistic Orcharding: Fruitful and Deer-full)

It’s but a month and a day after Independence Day and we’re eating our first peaches of the season. Eureka!

So memorable a moment each summer when I savor the first bites of the first peaches of the season that I’ve begun to wonder if we might need to create a floating holiday. It’s hard to conceive of a better cause for celebration.

[…]

I’m abundantly grateful for our stone fruit harvests in general and our peaches in particular. It’s almost as if we’re cheating nature! And my tendency to romance the first peaches of the season is rooted in this enduring awe. We actually raised peaches! Almost too good to be true. Perhaps this peach plenitude will eventually become familiar enough that we’ll take it for granted. But it’s hard to imagine. Such a delicate ambrosial fruit prospering in our northern climes. Truly a bonanza! (Source: First Peaches)

Let’s flip the calendar… to sunny August when Rosslyn’s peach trees offered up sun warmed fruit bursting with nectar. (Source: Peach Haikus)

Summer’s first peaches,
sunshine soaked and siren sweet,
seduce all senses.
— Geo Davis, "First Peaches"

Glorious indeed it is to report that our peaches this year are the tastiest I’ve ever grown. Also the biggest, juiciest, sweetest, and IMHO the prettiest…

I’m chortling in my joy. Imagine, if you dare, the decadence of lifting a sun warmed peach, freshly plucked from the branch, up to your mouth, lips parting against the fuzzy flesh, teeth sinking effortlessly into the sweet meat, juice dribbling down your chin,…

It’s truly sensational! Peach perfection. Almost.

[…]

Our peaches this year are startlingly few after the bumper crops we’ve enjoyed over the last few years. It’s fair to say that 2020 and 2021 provided enough peaches to satisfy our most gluttonous appetites and to share with all who desired, from friends to wildlife. But 2022 has been a been a poignant recalibration.

We lost our two Reliance Peach trees this season. All of four peach trees budded on time this spring, and all four began to push out tiny little leaves. But then the two Reliance trees stalled. No apparent weather shock or fungus or predation. Just withering. And then suddenly the Reliance trees were dead. The other two trees, both Contender Peach variety, struggled as well. But they gradually overcame whatever was afflicting them (despite never really recovering 100%). Both Contender Peach trees experienced some die-back, and both set an unusually light load of fruit. (Source: Peaches This Year)

Few peaches this year
but plump, nectar swollen with
best flavor ever.
— Geo Davis, "Peaches This Year"

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It’s possible to purchase peaches year-round, harvested faraway in warmer climes. And yet, no matter how reputable the source, there’s simply no comparing a snow season peach to the fresh-off-the-tree variety we enjoy in mid to late summer. The colors are almost impossibly saturated, and the sweet treacle that drips from lips is an indulgence on par only with fantasies. Even the aroma of a sun soaked peach pulled from the branch is an extravagance. Store bought winter peaches often have no smell at all, or only the subtlest of ghost-smells, like a facsimile transmitted too many times, diluted with each new iteration. (Source: Peach Haikus)

Soon enough those peach-like winter facsimiles will be the closest we can get to reliving today’s peach season decadence. One more reason yo enjoy another quick snack…