Backyard Harvest

The apple tree is behind the chair. At the end of the season we can store the apples outside. The birds don't peck them and the ants don't find them.

In the center: the apple known as The Cannonball. I put other things around it to give some size perspective. But my camera has a wide-angle lens and makes it look smaller. Believe me, it was massive.

We have a mess of an apple tree in the backyard. It hasn’t been pruned in who knows how long. But it still produces apples. Tons of them. Some of them the birds eat. Some drop off the tree and the ants get them. Or they rot on the ground. 

But some make it all the way to being ripe, whole, not picked over. So we pick them,  try to store them, and turn them into applesauce, apple pies, and apple butter before they spoil. 

We got a couple of boxes of apples this year, including what we called “The Cannonball”. This was an apple so large, that it wouldn’t fit into the long-handled apple picker we borrowed from our landlord. I had to balance it on the top and lower it gently so I could grab it. It managed to stay unnibbled and whole because it hung precariously from the end of a branch that was far enough from other branches so the birds couldn’t reach it. It grew and grew. Well, it was an achievement to grow so large, and arrive perfectly on our table. 

And then we ate it.

Let’s see what happens next year.