the tennis ball tree is in fruit again

How glad I am that Penny doesn't chew the tennis balls she finds. Otherwise, when December comes and the 'tennis ball' tree - aka in human terms as the plum tree - comes into fruit, Penny might chew her way through to the dangerous pip in the middle of the plum.

I hadn't realised the plums were ripening, until I glanced at Penny relaxing near her mat...

with the ball she stole from her friend Jabari last week...
and a new ball.

Hmm... what new ball is this?

It sure looks like a plum.

But, to misquote Shakespeare, what's in a name? That which we call a plum by any other name would smell as sweet. Or taste as good, if it hadn't been first chewed by a bird and then carried in Penny's mouth.

red tennis balls grow on trees

The red tennis balls (aka plums) are ripening on the tree.   Penny has collected one to keep.

Fortunately, she doesn't eat the plums. She just likes to have them around, perhaps regarding them as toys.

Penny's fruit collection

It's that time of year once more - the time when Penny collects fruit from the plum tree - or, as I suspect she thinks of it, the tennis ball tree.

As the years pass, we relax a little about her fruit collecting, because she seems to just want to have it, rather than eat it. However, the fruit will disappear into the compost bin soon.

Here's today's collection.



The usual crop of bird-pecked plums has been added to with a rat-chewed passionfruit. (Yep, we have rats in the garden, which is playing havoc with my resolution to kill no living creature. Earlier this year Penny did kill one rat, and now that she's recovered from her cruciate surgery, she's out looking for them once more, but I wouldn't really want to see her kill one.)