Cherry Trees

We planted 3 cherry trees yesterday along the main house driveway in the front yard: North Star, a sour cherry; Bing, a sweet dark cherry; and Ranier, a sweet red cherry. Should have cherries to pick in a couple of years. Nothing better than sour cherry pie and you cannot find sour cherries in the grocery stores anymore. In the 18th century, it was common practice to plant fruit trees, especially cherry trees, along the driveway. Front yards weren’t really grassy yards in the modern sense. Manicured lawns are a 19th century development. A country plantation considered the front yard as pasture land or even crop land. Cleaning trees to graze livestock or plant crops was very labor intensive and having a grassy front yard was a luxury beyond almost all plantation owners. By the way: “plantation” is just the 18th century term for “farm.”