The Loveliest of....

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And Take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A. E. Houseman

Peaches, not cherries. Fruit, not blooms. The peaches are in at the Apple Farm, the In-veggie place in Cleveland. One friend told me she loved the white peaches, another preferred the yellow. My dad’s cousin who works at the Apple Farm said yellow…then he showed me why. The whites bruised easily. You would have to eat a box in one day before they all ruined, so of course I got the yellow. But I caged a sack of bruised whites to give them a try. Oh, me, oh, my. Whites won the taste test, hands down. Juicy and sweet and just plain peachy. The yellows were hard, and not so sweet, but never mind. Not a one went to waste. My mom used to buy a bushel of peaches from Parchman, the state prison farm down the road. She would freeze them for summer ice cream and lazy pies, or just peaches with Miss Mildred’s angel food cake. I made the lazy pie, and bought the ice cream. My grandmother made this pie with blackberries…mostly ones she’d picked and frozen. It can be made with canned blackberries, or most any juicy fruit if you are not a purist. My son prefers blackberries, also, but he wasn’t at home for today’s peach cobbler. Cindy, diet buddy, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Oh, the weight loss ground you will lose….but then, as Houseman knew, how many more peach seasons do we have?

Lazy Pie
Ruby Gibson’s Recipe
Melt one stick of butter in deep pan.
Sift together: 1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
pinch of salt (optional)

Mix with 2/3 cup of milk. Pour in pan on melted butter. Add 2 ½ cups sweetened fruit. DO NOT STIR. Bake 45 minutes on about 350 degrees.


I used butter milk, and added ¼ teaspoon soda. I only used ½ stick of butter. And my pan was a Pyrex two quart rectangular dish...you know, the medium sized one so you could have lots of buttery brown crust.

Peaches in Mississippi in the summer…