Beachton Book Works

Love bugs
like the gas fumes
at the truck stop.
Love bugs
hover in my car,
stick to my rear view mirrors
like tissue paper
on a piñata.
Love bugs
inanimate
in the spider webs
on my house.
Lizards
won’t eat
a love bug.

All natural, no pesticides, wild Chickasaw plums make jelly comparable to Mayhaw. The fragrance is a combination of roses and the characteristic plum smell of domestic plums. The flavor is pure sour. If you use the seeds in the juice their slight bitterness adds a kind of peppery complexity if you like that sort of thing. I used them in my syrup but not the jelly. This native tree was moved close to the house by Momose. This makes it convenient to pick up freshly dropped plums every day. Mama got enough Sunday to make a dozen jars of jelly, then I picked them up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for another 27 jars. There were enough fermenting on the ground from the first week they fell to make another 2 dozen jars of jelly at least. This is a very productive plum tree.