Planting Apple Trees

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,

you must first create the universe."

-- Carl Sagan

Homegrown Macintosh apples 8-27-14

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.

The second best time is now."

-- Unknown

Roughly 16 years ago, my husband and my son, Sam, planted two scrawny, skinny, leafless sticks in our back yard.

They said they were apple trees.

I was skeptical. 

They looked like dead twigs.

But ...

They were indeed apple trees, albeit in their infancy.

Now our two scrawny trees (I call them "Two Tree Orchard") are full and lush, towering over the backyard fence, their down-turning branches heavily laden with ripening fruit.

Yesterday I was mowing the grass under them and the branches kept whacking me in the head and apples kept dropping to the ground. So I harvested an armful. The apples are just a tad too green for eating yet, but cooked down with some sugar, cinnamon and butter, they made pretty good applesauce.

Later, when the apples are a little bit riper, I'll make as many quarts of sauce as I can so we can eat it all winter long.

And I have all kinds of plans for cobblers, crisps, breads, cakes and pies.

I like being a suburban farmer, with my tiny little orchard and my tiny little garden.

It makes me feel more than good to cultivate and feed myself and my family the freshest possible food on the planet -- fruits and vegetables that come in straight from the backyard mere minutes before they hit the plate.

It doesn't get any gooder than that.

The View From My Kitchen Window

"Winter then it its early and clear stages,

was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country,

alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light

into the arms of bare upreaching trees."

-- Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

The view from my kitchen window 1-8-14

 "Life moves pretty fast. 

If you don't stop and look around once in a while, 

you could miss it."

-- Ferris, Ferris Bueller's Day Off

The winter landscape has been harsh, cold and bleak lately.

Talking about the winter weather has grown boring and mundane.
Dealing with it has grown even boring-er and more mundane-er.

I was elbows deep in a ho-hum kitchen sinkful of sudsy water, doing the mundane task of washing boring old lunch dishes, when I glanced up and out.

It was early afternoon, but a half-moon had already settled in the cloudless blue sky. The sun was reflecting off the ice coating the frozen treetops so that they glittered like jewels, like diamonds.

I left the dishes in the sink, dried my hands and bundled up -- boots, coat, hat, gloves, hood. I grabbed my camera and stomped through the heavily crusted snow of the backyard knowing I had to work fast because A.) it was -4 degrees with a -20 windchill, and B.) the sky is a fickle and elusive thing. Like rainbows and sunsets, the perfect light will leave as quickly as it came.

I got a few shots before my fingers went numb. None of them do the scene justice. But I tried.

I felt lucky, like I'd seen something private, meant just for me and the moon. It was like spotting a rare bird in the forest for just a moment before it flits away. While the rest of the world had its backs turned toward the sky, hunched against the brutal wind, giving Winter the finger, I happened to look up and Winter showed me a glimpse of her other, prettier side.

Winter wasn't the boring, harsh, cold bitch everyone was making her out to be.

In that moment, in that light, all done up in sparkles, she looked better than good. She was perfectly lovely.