Appletime

[primsong]

I was out picking another bucket of apples, just thinking about how amazingly lovely the colors are on the gravensteins, the green on the side away from the sun, the golden tints on the other with streaks of perfect red gradually blooming over them as they ripen. They cluster together on the tree, small, surrounded sometimes by the dust-scented brown crumbles of the old spring blooms, a few ambitious young spiderwebs. I just fit under our tree without too much stooping, threading my arms up through the branches and fruiting spurs to reach the ripest of each, hoping to leave the companions for another day.

I don't always manage it, of course. A gentle twist of the stem brings off the end of the spur, all three apples with it, or a tug on the reddest showers me in a brief hail of greener globes. I bend and gather them all up, sorting the usable into my bucket. Most of them are usable - like people, nearly all have some good in them if you can pare away the bad. It's only a very tiny number that must go into my debris bin, and those usually weren't 'bad apples' either, I just didn't find them before the birds did, or before their bruising fall has overtaken them. Even then, I only toss them with regret.

My large bucket is full of fruit, brimming, heavy to carry. I balance just a couple more on top. I've done applesauce, apple-butter, apple-crisp. These will be pies, sliced, filled and frozen for wintertime, when this little tree will be brown and dark with rain and barren. For now the sun is warm on my shoulders and there are bits of leaves in my hair, the breeze is scented of cedar and fir and apples and I am glad you are with me.

Comments

[maidoforange.livejournal.com]

Oh, your apples sound lovely, Prim and that is a excellent metaphor you made with them there.

[the-tinidril.livejournal.com]

Lovely!