Nanking Cherry Syrup

Our neighbor recently asked if she could steal the fruit off our Nanking Cherry trees in the back yard and my wife gave her carte blanch to the bushes.  I had planned to try and make a loaf of bread out of the fruit, but I was much happier to have someone else do the heavy lifting and bring me a jar of Nanking Cherry syrup that can be used on vanilla ice cream, french toast, and pancakes.  No doubt, it has a lot of sweetener in it, but then so does the ice cream I put it on.  Wonderful stuff.  It's exciting to have the back yard actually creating food.

Here's one of the trees with the cherries.  I have a cup of them upstairs to try in bread, but they're small, so they're a lot of work to get ready.  The best way I've read of is to boil them for a while, and then use a strainer to push the pulp out of the cherries, leaving the skins and pits behind.


The bushes.  Only three of them produced any quantity of cherries.


While I'm at it, I thought I'd photograph the more attractive parts of the back yard, including my wife's flower bed.  I cropped out my stocking feet.


A bug's eye view, albeit a very very large bug, or a bug with wings.  Looks nice, although it could use some wood chips or mulch to spruce up (oh...that's funny...admit it) the dirt and dead remainders.


And the trellis.  Next year I'd like to have a V-shaped portable hydroponic grow station here for vegetables (opt 2, opt 3), somewhat like what Junko's showed at the State Fair.  I was thinking about it in April, but I need to buy a pump and start collecting the supplies for what I have in mind. I'd like to rip out the deck and replace it with stones as well.  The wood is in sorry shape.  It looks better with a pile of snow covering  the flaking stain.