Marie's Tree Top Sour Cherry Jam

Last Sunday Robert came into the kitchen carrying a small white plastic bucket of sour cherries.I could tell just by looking that there was something special about them. They were almost translucent and a much brighter red than any we'd been picking from our trees. He placed them on the counter and said, "Will you make jam with these?" I'd not been planning on making any sour cherry jam this year and we had just had that very conversation at breakfast in the morning, so I wondered why this request was now being made.

My husband is a man of few words. In the fifteen years that we have been together, I've learned that when he says something that I may find a bit curious there's always a deeper meaning behind it. He explained that these cherries were special and just had to be made into jam. When I pressed him a bit further, he told me that the cherries in the bucket were picked from the very top of the tree. He had never been able to harvest from the cherry tree tops before because the birds always got to the fruit before we did. This year was different and he was able to get a full bucket of them. But I knew there was something more than availability of the fruit, so I asked why I just shouldn't pit and freeze them like I'd done with the rest of the harvest earlier in the week. Finally the answer came, "Because, " he said handing me the small bucket, "my Mom always made jam with the fruit from the top of the tree. She said it was the sweetest because it was the most difficult to get."  And with than answer, I knew his mother, Marie, was right--the hardest things to get sometimes are indeed the very sweetest.

Photo: Robert's harvest of tree top cherries