More on Olives

After reading Ian's post on harvesting olives in Ramallah, my aunt-in-law Kathy wrote the following about picking them in her California backyard:

It really is fun harvesting them . . . we have two trees in our backyard and learned how to run our fingers down the branch and hear them ping into the bucket. We've been experimenting with brine curing. ( I couldn't bear to pour lye over them. :( ). Some of them are about ready to eat by now, yay. The almond trees are almost in full blossom and the beehives are all set up in the orchards. It's a different kind of snow . . .