Planting trees -- really, planting anything -- is a leap of faith into the future. This year I planted a couple dozen assorted fruit trees even though I'd had some discouraging failures on my first attempt. Last year was my first good crop on the Black Jack fig and I can see that it is doing even better this year. We had a generous crop of Satsuma mandarins last winter, and my Bokay and Steuben grapevines have finally decided to grow up the arbor. To top it all off, my five year old Santa Rosa plum set its first real crop. In fact, we could not eat all the delicious fruit so I made nine jars of jam. That was so much fun I picked mulberries and made ten jars of mulberry jam.

I'm thinking that the time is coming in a few years when I won't buy any fruit at all, unless I want to bake banana bread!

Rosefolly