Monday, September 21, 2009

My Bitterness Subsides... The Apple Story

We share a backyard fence with three neighbors and one of these neighbors has an apple tree just 3 feet on their side. Give yourself a pat on the back if you guessed what this post is about. For those of you that didn't get it, it means apples galore on our side of the fence.

For three years, Fred has cussed the neighbors as he mows over the literal 100s of apples in our yard in various stages of decay. Now and then the mower even tries to chuck a rotting apple right at Fred. Done mowing, we now have a patch of rotting applesauce.

The other weekend, Grandma Judy had the bright idea to pick a few of those apples giving me some line about it falling on my property and being mine. I had my doubts, but we picked a couple from the branch and cut them up. Best. Apples. Ever.

Fast forward a week or so and I come home from work to find the neighbors on a ladder - in OUR yard - picking apples. Pick-pick-pick. For a full minute I was convinced they were picking all of the apples so that Judy and I wouldn't get any more. When the Grandma Wenciker paranoia wore off I realized - hey, they're even picking up the rotten ones! Super Sweet!

Elliot and I headed down and helped out for a bit. In the end, she had 3 5-gallon buckets and 2 shopping bags full of good apples. I came back with 2 full bags. Mrs. Apple Tree Owner told us they were sold a 10' dwarf apple tree 35 years ago; I think they were sold a lie.

As I sit here munching a fresh apple I can't help but think what a sweet lie that was. I'm not all hyper granola-crunchin-tree-hugging-save-the-whales or anything but I am loving this truly organic apple stash a mere 20 yards from my backdoor.

Pictures here.

2 comments:

virg_nelson said...

You are a wonderful photographer... anyone ever tell ya that? Just sayin.

Anna said...

Ahh, you are too kind.

Its the beauty of a digital camera - what you don't see is the 147 deleted bad pictures!! :o)