'Cherries, Nectarines, Apricots and Early Peaches'

Neighbors gave us a sack of golf-ball-size peaches from the tree in their front yard. I’ve been watching it for months through the front window. They covered it with gauzy white netting resembling an oversized shower cap to keep off the bugs and squirrels, and generally babied the tree. The fruit is fuzzy, blemish-free and sweet. Because they are smaller than the peaches you find at the grocery store, you’re tempted to eat two or three at a time. We’re trying to be strong. Yvor Winters was the pomologist among poets. Along with raising goats and Airedales, he tended a small orchard of fruit trees at his home in Los Altos, Calif. On November 16, 1958, he writes to Don Cameron Allen at Johns Hopkins: “The frost finished my fig crop, but ripened my persimmons and pineapple guavas. The last of my Valencia oranges were picked recently, but we are still eating them (they ripen in May). My tangerines will ripen around Christmas. My strawberry guava crop has just come to an end, after about…