Maude

Our backyard apricot tree is having another bumper crop, her fourth year in a row. I named this tree "Maude", after an original Basaltine, Maude Elmont, who was the longest running "Postmaster" ( she refused to tolerate being called "post-mistress") in Basalt's history. Maude died in 2001, at 101 years of age.

Maude was our neighbor, and she was the "Apricot Lady" of Basalt. Her modest house shared it's 1/4-acre lot with 31 apricot trees. Two of the oldest and largest of these hung over the road, and people walking by often gathered a few from the ground in August. I'm sure that many of the neighborhood trees we harvest today sprouted from pits grown around Maude's house, and tossed around town.

Twenty-four years ago, I found a waist-high apricot tree growing in our front yard, under one of our century-old mountain maple trees. "You won't get much sun here," I thought, "you're moving to the back yard." Our "Maude" has thrived there since. She even recovered from the sudden shade we placed her in when we added a second story to the house, in 1997. I trimmed and pruned Maude every other year since, in an atempt to get her to be a second-story tree, so she could see around the addition, and I could prune and harvest her from the flat roof deck.

Maude was the Apricot tree from which we enjoyed "winter blossoms" all winter long, by placing pruned branches in a vase of water indoors. She even supplied our Christmas Tree, which I photographed into a slide show (click here).

Every day now, I'm on the roof deck, harvesting them as they ripen, between half-a-gallon and a gallon a day. Some of them I split and pit, arrange on cookie sheets and freeze, to store in big ziplock bags, for winter tarts, pies, jam and smoothies. The really soft ones I pit and run through the food processor with a small amount of sugar and some lemon juice, then freeze in ziplock-bag "bricks", to eat as apricot sorbet, quite a delicious treat.

Thank you, Maude!