Apple Picking

We had a great little excursion to pick apples at Blue Jay Orchards and finished the fun with a warm box of apple cider donuts, rolled in cinnamon sugar. Autumn joy abounds.

Blue sky, red fruit, green leaves....beautiful.

I love the bounty of fruit rolling around under your feet, everywhere you step.

Snow White apple all shined up and glowing

I love that Dee puts little bits of flora that he finds behind his ears.

Witness...

Nib, riding in the baby pack during picking...

Ooo....new ones!

And yeah...you can see where Dee is getting the idea. Hee hee.

Apple cider donuts are so very, very good.

...lick your fingers off good.

Smiley babe, blazing blue sky.

And now there are bags of apples in the basement, rows of apples on the fruit table and apples in our minds and their dusky taste embedded in our mouths. Tasting every variety several times all the way through a mixed orchard will do that to you.

We are dreaming of warm pies ala mode, and apple dumplings, oozing buttery cinnamon...and I hoping this weekend to take my first crack at the bags of fruit and make something truly delicious...another apple cake could be squoze in too.

I leave you with this beautiful poem on the subject, which makes me want to be in my Mama's kitchen with sisters at my elbows.

Apple Season

by Joyce Sutphen

The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples,
big yellow pie apples, light in the hand,
their skins freckled, the stems knobby
and thick with bark, as if the tree
could not bear to let the apple go.
Baskets of apples circle the back door,
fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.

My mother and my grandmother are
running the apple brigade. My mother,
always better with machines, is standing
at the apple peeler; my grandmother,
more at home with a paring knife,
faces her across the breadboard.
My mother takes an apple in her hand,

She pushes it neatly onto the sharp
prong and turns the handle that turns
the apple that swivels the blade pressed
tight against the apple's side and peels
the skin away in long curling strips that
twist and fall to a bucket on the floor.
The apples, coming off the peeler,

Are winding staircases, little accordions,
slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until
my grandmother's paring knife goes slicing
through the rings and they become apple
pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon
they will be married to butter and live with
cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after.