An Inefficient Pleasure

When an economist looks at a cherry tree, he or she sees inefficiency. The excess of flowers will yield an excess of cherries, each with its own fertile pit, all of which can't possibly grow into cherry trees. What a waste! A poet who considers a cherry tree--particularly a Japanese poet who considers a cherry tree heavy with blossoms--will inevitably feel a surge of melancholic verse well up inside about the beauty and fleeting nature of Earth's creation. A cherry lover looking at a cherry tree will mainly think of the delicious bounty of cherries it will produce.

The best thing you can do with fresh, ripe cherries is to bite them off at the stem immediately, eat them and, if you're outdoors, spit the pits as far as you can. With any luck they'll grow into cherry trees. After all, the more cherry trees, the better.

If the cherries are over- or underripe, or if you have so many you want to do something other than stick them all into your mouth, make a cherry pie, and be grateful Mother Nature never studied economics.

--Elbrich Fennema