Nostalgic Cherry Plums

When me and my sister were younger, and were on better terms, every summer, we used to go to our neighborhood park and pick cherry plums off the trees. Cherry plum trees grow in abundance but I think very few people know that the fruit of those trees are actually edible. The fruit is tiny like a cherry but has the taste of a plum. Anyways, one of us, usually my sister, would climb the trees to pick the fruit and throw them down, and the other, me, would be below with a bag ready to catch them. When the fruit is ripe, it’s usually soft and very sweet. When the fruit was unripe, it was still edible, but very crunchy and tasted sour like a warhead candy.

Today was especially sunny and as I was walking on campus, I spotted one of those trees. Some trees carry fruit but most don’t seem to. You also need to have a trained eye to pick out the fruit since the leaves and cherry plum are the same color and camouflage. One branch was low enough for me to reach, and on my tippy-toes, I was able to pick out 3 cherry plums. I haven’t tasted the fruit in 10+ years, and was really doing this for nostalgia’s sake. I brushed the berries off the side of my dress to “clean” them, and excitedly bit into one. The taste was so remarkably SOUR. Summer has barely started yet so, now thinking back, it makes sense these aren’t in season. I chucked the other two to the ground and kept walking along to my next class. I scanned my eyes around campus to find other cherry plum trees but couldn’t find any. Although the cherry plum was sickly acidic, I think on my last day on campus, I’ll still pluck some to bring home. Hopefully they’ll grow ripe within a week, but again, it’s just for nostalgia’s sake.

P.S: I know it’s bad but this is my first time in a while coming back onto campus. The college I go to is such a far drive and gas prices never seem to go down. But hey, at least I’m still passing my classes.

TLDR: I tried cherry plums again and it was sour.