Of Apples and Personal Anniversaries

Well, it could only be a matter of time!

Our Miss GetFresh has a birthday today!  We hope you have the loveliest of days GF and that you get all your heart's desires in the coming year, particularly as they relate to certain orange boxes!

So a little cake for you..

Source

We had a lovely day here yesterday.  It was +24, an unheard of temperature for the end of September (though with global warming, it does seem like we say that a lot, doesn't it?) and we went for a little apple picking adventure.

 

 

We picked McIntosh and Cortlands and I imagine that there will be a few pies and crisps in the coming days!

In honour of our little apple picking adventure and of GetFresh's birthday, I thought I might share the poem After Apple Picking by Robert Frost:

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Robert Frost

I hope you have a lovely day GetFresh and that the rest of you do as well!  Stay safe out there!