They look delicious! I can't wait till Washington cherries are ripe.

Look at it this way, if the birds weren't around there'd be heaps more bugs and other parasites so you might've ended up with no cherries at all.

Cherries Jubilee anyone?

The CDs are ingenious. The cherries look lovely -- they are my favourite. My oldest friend's family still runs an orchard and I get spoiled with fresh organic cherries every summer. I can hardly wait.

The cherries come so quickly in California. It's sort of sad, cause by the time it's the peak of summer, I forget about the cherries.

Very true Ablonde, my husband keeps saying, we have to share, it's not all for us.

emma, spoiling you with cherries.

I even got a cherry pitter, hoping for some jam, or a clafoutis, yes, tomorrow.

A bowl full of cherries. That's a lot. I didn't get a bowl full, but I think I got Danette's and maybe Amy's. But that was way before CD's, though. Back then there was no protection except to wear two girdles. Alas, my cherry picking days are behind me I suppose.

Cherries are the first of the stone fruit to ripen.

How about peaches? We've been eating them here for a while now.

Well, depends where you are, peaches are probably coming from the warmer climates to where you are, where are you?
Cherries as the smallest usually ripen first, at least that has been my experience.

I'm in the hill country in NC. We've been eating peaches from SC for a while. They are just beginning to ripen down east and in the Sandhills here. First come the strawberries, then the peaches. In three weeks the blackberries will be ripe and in September, the plums and muskedeins. Finally, in late October early November it will be safe to eat a persimmon.

Do you have local cherries?

I am proud to say that I also own a cherry pitter.

Yep, there were a few trees around that I remember from my youth. But I haven't seen one in a while. Used to see a lot of crabapple trees when I was a kid, but couldn't find one of them now either. I know where some wild plum and mulberry trees are and can find plenty of blueberries, but I haven't seen a cherry tree in forever. I'm sure there's bound to be some around here, I just don't know where.

Brilliant, thanks for that. I'm trying to keep anything but me, from eating my Victoria Plums.
Maggie

Oh, I am so jealousing. I had to buy mine at Publix yesterday.
Lovely, luscious, mouth-watering pics.

Cherry Trees are ripening now. Peaches are later.
Squirrels love fuzzy peaches. They get peace faces.
Peach lip. Cherries? Go crow, groundhog, raccoon,
and eat your acorn? BO's DOD steals bing cherries?
B. Obama? You kill? Afghanistan grow the poppies.
Wall Street love opium, coco bean, and pluck buds.
In literature:`Pluck the glistening hemp herb buds.
Ay, then share then with your friends. It is written.
I am just saying it's written. Let's caravan cherries,
plums, greens, berries, and incinerate war arsenals.
Everyone knows it's the Profit. Hidden motive? Yes!
Wager. O have colloquium. Honesty. Pluck ear hair!
apologies Stella. My cherry was popped in Vietnam!
Villain. Obama is capable of being servant:`Shame!
Who doth steal? Ask Natures? Read:` Blaise Pascal.
He spoke of the theory of probabilities. The Wager.
B. Obama brings a- Shame. What will posterity say?

Wow, I envy you your cherries. I'll trade you some pears for some.?

We had lots of cherry trees where I grew up-- every summer my brother and I, along with any friend or relative who happened to be in the vicinity-- would climb those trees half naked, swinging from the branches and stuffing ourselves silly with warm, fresh cherries, straight off the limb. The very best kind.

These are beauties.

Too bad the Old CDs sort of ruin the aesthetic. At least they're good for something.

denese

As much as I love cherries I am more interested in your CD/birds theory. Where does it come from? M. Chariot is plagued by the California magpie - nefarious, tophat-obsessive creature - and I would prefer to hang something more subdued, like CDs, than the 7 large, plastic owls I have perched around the entrance to my cloistral apartments.

Mmmmm!!! Lovely photos. I love cherries, too.

I vote for a clafoutis...

Someone else now owns the two cherry trees I planted years ago. You have reminded me how much I miss them, and damn! I would have liked to try the CD system. I think they're kind of pretty.

I never knew about the CDs! If I had a cherry for every CD my husband has had to throw away, I'd be very happy right now.

Ah, cherries...my favorite summer fruit! I wonder if the CD trick would work for blueberry bushes. I've tried for years to grow them but the birds eat every berry.

Cherries! The fruit of gods, the essence of ambrosia, the perfect companion to both chocolate cake and game....

Still too expensive here. I give it a month till the price reaches my temptation level. (I'll never grow my own, unless I manage to end up in the upper galilee where the weather is ok for it. I ain't living in the Golan Heights (where they grow excellent cherries on the basalt soil) - I'd like to know my grandkids will enjoy the house I build :-)

The use for old cd's is awesome too :)

Ingenious idea. My F-I-L has a cherry tree, and it seems the birds (and I think possibly the squirrels) tend to make short work of his meager crop.

I'll have to suggest this - I have a drawer full of old software CDs that might come in handy. :-D

Beautiful pictures. Love that blush on the cherries and the way they peek from under the leaves. Eating straight from a friend's cherry tree is one of my favorite childhood memories. Enjoy!

Those are just beautiful! I used to have a sour cherry tree in Atlanta that I had to put a net over every year. Not a great solution - the birds would still get in and then get stuck inside. The CD idea is much more humane, if not effective.
Our blueberries are just starting to come in here in the mountains, but I'd love some organic cherries!!

What a great tip! And I love the idea of the cat chasing the light on the grass - what a bonus.

I'm keeping my eyes on my two apricot trees...between the birds and the deer I'm lucky to get many at all. I feel your pain. I've used pie tins, but cd's is brilliant!

When I was a kid, we had three cherry trees in the backyard. We would let the cherries ripen and then wait one week for the worms. The worms would eat their way out of the cherries they were in, those cherries would die/rot and then we were left with good cherries.

It was a cherry pitter that revealed the worms to us.

Monsieur, the owls do not work at all, allegedly plastic, toy snakes work better.
tarhill, of course cherries and apricots are first cause they are the smallest.

Arthur, no one was protecting your cherry? Yes, it was not Vietnam for me, but the era.

Ricky, Lebanon has loads of cherries, sour cherries make that great syrup. Ask the IDF to get you some...:)
What amazes me, is how the farmers manage to get oodles of cherries, I guess they outnumber the birds.
Ardee, the netting is messy for sure.

Silkstone, she was exhausted, ever since we moved to the country, six months now, I think she lost 1/3 of her weight, hunting and acting like a predator, this skanky cat my daughter found on San Pablo Avenue, almost dead and sick as anything.

Apricots, I love them. Most of all they have the best name in Arabic, Mishmish. Save the apricots.

rated for this ws a peek into another world: and made me smile to look at the cherries, the red, the flower like CD hanging from the fresh shady green

Eee! My favorite fruit. I just paid a king's ransom for a pint of those. Is it my imagination, or do the golden-and-pink cherries taste better than the less costly red ones?

Waiting impatiently for the first ripe peaches to arrive from north Georgia and South Carolina. Peaches, unlike cherries, don't ship well and stores typically carry the rock-hard variety that have the consistency and flavor of tennis balls.

If you don't want to use CD's I would imagine compact makeup mirrors taken out of the case would work just as well.

Stellaa,

You need to try some old Barry Manilow CD's. That'll keep everything away.

Griff, better than that, I have a connection that gives me cheesy music, they think I would like, makes tons of CDs for me, they are all on the tree. Hoping they don't visit.

Oh man! Ranier cherries. They just don't come any better. when I was a kid in Oklahooma my neighbor had a cherry tree. The only pest they needed to worry about was me.

C ya. Gotta go to the store now and get some cherries.

Lisa: I think I heard or read somewhere that you can put cheesecloth on blueberry bushes (maybe others, too?) in order to keep the birds at bay.

But, maybe it would be kinder to leave them access to one of the bushes. After all, they must need those antioxidants, too. ;~)

my grandmother had a cherry tree in her yard. it was there that i learned how to tie the stem into a knot using just my tongue. i think it was then that my problems began.
thanks for the memories...

We use to use old pie plates. As they twist in the wind they flash the sunlight and it scares the birds. For a while I tossed an old rope under the tree and the birds thought it was a snake.

My mouth is watering. Thank you for this.

My sister inlaw put up netting, Now do you throw the CDs at the birds or just hang them on the trees?

Before I started reading I thought perhaps you had planted a CD and ended up with some kind of iTunes tree. Oh. I like cherries too.

Grif is so funny, and so is dcvdickens.

Cherries are the best part of summer.

I could eat your entry. That sounds a little wrong.

I think CDs hanging from trees are kind of pretty. At a Burning Man festival many years back, someone had a whole camp made of CDs. When the sun set, the camp dazzled. People would wear their most sparkling clothes as well.

ohh, my favorites are Queen Anne Cherries, and those look just like them- mouth is watering just thinking about them

I'd have to say that you scored a moral victory.

Yum! I've got Nanking bush cherries. The birds take the ones on top and I get all the others. They're listed as sour cherries. Tart but sweet is a better description. They're solid cherry red. Yours have a two-tone blush. Do you know what variety they are?

Stella

I had to come back. Your post reminded me of a place in Southern Nevada called Christmas Tree Pass. Years ago, before BLM finally cleaned it up and posted fines for littering, people hung "ornaments" on the short evergreens along the pass. They were literally covered with everything from Christmas ornaments, underpants, bras, rubbers, car parts. Just about anything you could think of.

It was rather unique, but I'm glad they cleaned it up, the pass is strikingly beautiful.

http://www.mojavetrails.com/searchlight.htm

I grew up in Michigan cherry country . . . makes my mouth water just looking at the ones you've got there.

You better leave some for me!! Do those cheesy music CDs have cheesy photoshopping on it that only an old greek man could make?

cherries are my favourite...and next is wild blueberries. I wish I could find something like this for the rabbits who ate the buds off my bushes last winter.

with this cold weather, we may not get either this year. ~tears~

Ramblin daughter, where were you hiding? By the time you get here the cherries will be gone, hope for some peaches, pears, apples and raspberries and if you are nice to your old mother, tomatoes.

You guessed the source of the CDs, now be quiet.

Boomer, that sounds cool.

Hanging cds...I can just see me sitting on the side slinging cds. Dangerous.

If you have sour cherries, send me some. There is a great Greek syrup that is just so delicious and so Proustian.

JK, so sorry about the cold, it's been unusually cloudy here, not foggy, cloudy.

Stellaa, I had no idea that cds were being used to ward off birds from cherry trees. Far less work than any kind of netting which would be nearly impossible to handle on a large tree. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that cds by Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond and the like are even more effective at repelling birds.

Read "Ramblin Woman's" comment, my daughter, the cds are from a certain brother of mine. They are mythic in the content. He has managed to find cheesy music through the ages and nations. For a while we were all getting about 2 per month.