$10 on bare-root-season clearance, as I remember.

It got pushed behind and forgotten: the bag with two pounds of frozen pitted sour English Morello cherries from our tree that I’d had thawing in the fridge.

It would be criminal to let those just sit there too long. No I didn’t have a pie crust, no I didn’t want to make a pie crust.

Make a crisp? he offered.

There’s too much of it; all those juices would turn it into soggy oatmeal. But the thought clarified what was at stake here. These deserve the right textures.

I did, I wanted that pie enough. And I knew an hour’s worth of picking and pitting had already gone into brightening up the anticipated rainy winter grays, and that’s what we had and will have over the next ten days and these were ready right now.

I made that crust.

Worth every minute.