Plums, Damsons, and the Art of the Difficult Fruit
There is a tree at the bottom of a garden I know, and for most of the year nobody pays it the slightest attention. It is not a handsome tree. It has a slightly put-upon look, a tendency to drop twigs, and leaves that go an unremarkable yellow before falling off in a sulk. And then, for about three weeks in the early autumn, it does something that makes the entire household lose its mind: it produces, from nowhere, several hundred weight of small, dusty, blue-black plums, far more than any sane family could eat, all of them ripening at once, most of them landing on the lawn with a soft and reproachful thud before anyone can get to them. This is the fundamental plum and damson problem, and it is worth stating plainly, because the whole culture of the plum flows from it. The plum does not arrive politely, a few at a time, over a civilised season. It arrives all at once, in a glut, in a panic, in quantities that turn a mild domestic fruit tree into a logistical emergency. One week there ...
