Plummania... It's the time for beach plums out at Canarsie in the Jamaica Bay wildlife refuge. I've been going there for about fifteen years to harvest the small reddish-blue astringent fruits. They taste like a cross between a cranberry and a plum. When the harvest is good, I have enough beach plum jelly to serve at Thanksgiving Dinner with the bird, alongside fresh cranberry-raspberry relish. The jelly is gone by Christmas, but if the harvest is good, we have beach plum shrub spiked with vodka and ginger ale. Beach Plum shrub is also good in seltzer or in sweet and sour sauces. Last year, 2004, was not a good year for beach plums. I didn't get out to Canarsie until Labor Day, and only found one lone beach plum. A friend of mine called to report that she had gone earlier and had found only a few plums. The natural cycle of beach plums alternates between good and sparse years. Every five years or so they have a prodigious year, yielding a huge crop of succulent plums - enough for jelly, shrub, preserves, and some to freeze. This year was average, but the fruits were very small, only about an inch wide, which is a pain because they have big plum pits. To get out to Canarsie Pier, take the L train from 14th street. Emerging from the tunnel in mid Brooklyn, the train travels over the highest point in the 'subway" system, soaring 200 feet at Broadway Junction over the "A" and "J" line stops. Looking out from the train, it is at eye level with a nearby seven story building. The next stop, Atlantic avenue, is equally high, and as you move on to the next stop at Sutter you can look down into junk yards where giant cranes lift up cars and trucks, placing them into crushing machines. The crushed up metal is taken on a conveyor belt over to the next yard and fed into a noisy shredding machine which spits out metal nibs onto a blackish pile. Descending, the train is at street level by the last stop. Busses meet the train inside the train stop, no fare necessary, to continue the trip. Although the buses travel under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) directly to Canarsie pier, there is no bus stop directly at the pier. Instead, travelers must get off a block away at the bus stop and walk to the pier. Cross the BQE exit ramp( there is a signal), walk under the BQE and then cross the BQE enter ramp ( there is no signal- watch carefully) in order to get to the pier and wildlife area. Once you have navigated these dangers, you'll find a large pier and a picnic area. Forget them - unless you like large expanses of concrete and parked cars. The little restaurant is usually closed, but people like to gather there to promenade. Old guys hang out along the fringes of the pier fishing. I saw a kid last year catching crabs in a trap by the defunct restaurant, and a 40'ish guy with sideburns was putting on his own DJ radio type show by the restrooms, with strong interference from the younger set. To find beach plums, Face the pier, turn left, and walk on the bike/jogging path along the expressway. You'll see a line of wildly inappropriate Arbor Vitae ( a columnar evergreen which prefers slightly acid soil) ) which is turning brown. Walk to the end of the line of dying evergreens and then lurch into the brush. The beach plums are on small shrub like trees or bushes with oval leaves. Look carefully for the small purple plums, they are overgrown this year with vines (maybe I'll take a trip out there next spring for some vine removal) After you spot a few, your eyes learn what to look for, and it gets easier to spot them. I quickly picked a pail full and then, since it was low tide, wandered out on the beach to enjoy the sky and watch the birds. A family was quietly fishing nearby, hip deep in the water, dressed in their bathing suits Working my way back up through the brush onto the pathway, I navigated the peril of the double BQE ramps to the bus stop. Getting on the bus, the fare box registered "transfer" on my Metro card. A cool one fare round trip between Manhattan and Canarsie Pier if you clock back onto the bus within 2 hours of your start time.