Um, Cherries

A quick announcement: cherry season is here.

Maybe you don't care. Maybe you live in a country where cherries are available year-round, or maybe you don't like cherries. To each his own.

I, however, have been waiting since last July for the next iteration of the Georgian cherry season. It gave me a break this year, falling a whole month earlier than in 2007, reducing the lag time between one beautiful cherry season and the next.



There's something about Georgian produce that makes it infinitely better than American produce. It's tough to say for sure if it's the growth hormones, genetic modification, and breeding-for-beauty that fruit in the States goes through. Frankly, I don't really care if any of those factors is going to give me a third arm or a 500% increased risk of toe cancer, but if every species of fruit all comes out tasting like the same brand of sugar water, then what are we living for?


I tried to explain all this to the woman who piled my kilo of cherries into a pink plastic bag. I don't think she cared. She took my two lari (~$1.35), asked me when I was leaving for America, and dumped a handful of sour plums in the bag for good measure, despite the following exchange:

Her: Do you like tkemali?
Me: No.
Her: Here, have some tkemali as a gift.

But I digress. All that's worth mentioning is that cherries are here, and I'm going to be spitting pits nonstop from now until July. That is all.