Lions donate blankets to Children’s Cancer Foundation

The Carson Valley Lions Club collected 251 items during their recent fleece blanket drive. The new, twin-size blankets were brought to the Northern Nevada Children’s Cancer Foundation in Reno to help provide comfort and support to young people receiving treatment for cancer.

The Lions expressed gratitude to everyone who donated blankets and to the following businesses for housing collection containers throughout the drive: Carson Valley Museum and Cultural Center, Douglas County Library, Fabric Chicks, Kids and Horses, Nevada State Bank, and Quilt House.

The Foundation is dedicated to helping local children and their families affected by childhood cancer. Find more information at nvchildrenscancer.org or call 775-825-0888.

Lions focus on issues related to vision, hunger relief, diabetes, youth, and the environment. Meetings are held the first and third Thursday of each month at the COD Casino, 1593 Esmeralda Avenue in Minden, with social time at 5:30 p.m. and meetings following at 6. Anyone interested learning more about the Lions Club can call Ron Santi at 775-315-2354.

FISH flea market this weekend

The FISH Ranchos Family Service Center flea market takes place 7 a.m. - noon Saturday.

Manager Diane Schachterle said the flea market is a great way for people to pass their treasures onto someone new and to help build community in the Ranchos.

Sellers can rent a booth space for $20, and each booth rental includes a $10 gift certificate redeemable at the FISH thrift store. Call 775-265- 3474 for booth rental inquiries or for more information.

Peaches make a sweet return

There’s a peach tree in our backyard that has faithfully produced a harvest of juicy, beautifully blushed fruit year after year for more than two decades. With practically zero effort on our part and provided there’s no hard frost in spring, we have plentiful peaches to enjoy and share with friends and neighbors every summer.

That is, we did until I made a well-intentioned but unfortunate decision to prune the tree a couple of years ago.

The tree was overgrown, and after reading that peach tree pruning should be done annually during springtime, I set to work. Once begun, it was easy to get lost in the meditative practice of assessing which branches to keep and which to cut away. I thought I’d kept good track of the overall amount of removal but when I stepped back to check my handiwork, I realized I’d taken more of the tree than intended.

The potential effects of this over pruning worried me and to my deep dismay, we did not get a single peach that year. The same thing happened the year after, and my heart was heavy with the belief that I’d destroyed our magic tree.

Several weeks ago, however, I noticed a welcome, familiar sight nestled beneath the peach tree’s canopy of long, green leaves. A few small globes of goodness dotted the tree here and there, and I whooped with joy at the discovery.

I pulled the first luscious peach from the tree this past weekend and ate it over the sink, humbled and grateful for the return of this sweet harvest. Reminding myself to be a little less enthusiastic in any future tree pruning efforts is a valuable lesson learned.

Amy Roby can be reached at ranchosroundup@hotmail.com.