Etymology websites have taught me (just this morning) that the expression is not “plum delicious” but “plumb delicious.” The origin is the French word for lead, plombe.
Meanwhile, the extraordinary French plums called Long Johns have arrived at Paley’s Farm Market in Sharon. I feel very special: Farmer Charlie Paley actually emailed me to announce the plums were arriving late last Friday, Sept. 7. He knows that I am a Long John plum enthusiast of the highest degree.

Cherries, while indigenous to Europe, have become a staple American food. The U.S. is ranked second in production of sweet cherries. Washington state in particular is a center of cherry production. New England and New York orchards also produce, although on a smaller scale and often with more of an emphasis on sour than sweet.
Cherries are one of the foods that have good taste and an abundance of natural benefits.

As tomato years go, it’s been kind of moderate. It isn’t one of those years where you have so many tomatoes on the vine that you just give up trying to pick them all. 
But it also hasn’t been a year of massive blight despite the wet weather. If you’ve lived here for a few years, you might remember that one very bad blight year, when everyone was worried that the soil would be contaminated for years to come.

The opioid crisis, as we know, is exploding. I don’t know quite why this is, but it seems that when addiction or disease trends really begin to hit a very low point, the media begins to talk about the children born from mothers with those diseases or addictions. Think of the crack babies and AIDS babies when those crises were at a peak of concern.