Bad Fruit

I know that all the rain this summer we’ve had has affected most crops. Still, I was getting really annoyed at the fruit I was buying.

The peaches were bland. The plums were uninspired. The grapes were dull. The cherries were sour…even the legendary sweet Rainier cherries were sour.

My favorite fruit of the season, the plum-apricot hybrid called the pluot, were bad. Not only were they not sweet, they had a chemical odor about them.

The blueberries were fine, but honestly…they’re freaking blueberries. Does anyone (aside from blueberry farmers) care? If you told me that blight had exterminated the entire blueberry species, my reaction would be, “Eh.”

I was starting to wonder if the problem was me, rather than the fruit. As we grow older, we lose taste buds. Had I gotten to the point were I’d lost the ability to taste the sweetness in fruits?

Thankfully, no. Today I had a terrific white-flesh nectarine. It was as sweet as any fruit I ever tasted.

So my decrepitude hasn’t eliminated my taste buds. Yet.