This was the most popular of my 2020 offerings, the third most-viewed post of the year. It surprises me how some posts maintain their popularity from year to year. An I wouldn’t have expected this one to top the 2020 offerings. Fruit is always popular I guess. No, seriously, I have no idea why people latched on to this one. I don’t even eat cherries.

Offhand I can’t think of any public fruit in Canada. It seems quite common in Germany.

By public fruit, I mean fruit trees on public property where anyone can enjoy the harvest. And with the higher temperatures in my area, there seems to be a variety.

October is when the walnuts seem to be at their height. Apples about the same time. Pears are sometime around there too. And I’m sure I am forgetting some, my brain doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders today. Maybe because it is cherry season.

Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t particularly care for cherries. I have no idea why, and in any case, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to like them to pick them – and my wife does indeed like the fruit.

There is a grove of cherry trees at the edge of Sulzburg with fruit just ripe for the picking. Or almost ripe.

When we first got here I had assumed the trees were on private property. But then my wife read in the weekly newsletter the village publishes that the cherries were ripe and people were encouraged to pick them.

I didn’t see anything like that this year, but I noted that the fruit is ripening, so as a good husband I went out and picked some for my wife. As I did so, there was a quote floating in the back of my mind about life being like a bowl of cherries – but I couldn’t remember what it was exactly or who said it. So I looked it up, and I’m sharing it with you today.

Except none of these quotes was familiar, except the one by Erma Bombeck (my parents had the book). Maybe I didn’t have something specific floating through my brain. Maybe I had just heard the phrase as a metaphor for when things are going well.

Doesn’t matter really. The important thing is that my wife enjoyed the cherries.

Life is just a bowl of cherries, don’t take it serious, its mysterious. Life is just a bowl of cherries, so live and laugh and laugh at love, love a laugh, laugh and love. – Bob Fosse

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? – Erma Bombeck

“Life is a bowl of cherries. Some cherries are rotten while others are good; its your job to throw out the rotten ones and forget about them while you enjoy eating the ones that are good! There are two kinds of people: those who choose to throw out the good cherries and wallow in all the rotten ones, and those who choose to throw out all the rotten ones and savor all the good ones.” ― C. Joy Bell