Apple Days of August

Apple Days of August

When we moved to Scotland, nine years ago, we didn’t get to pick our house—it came with the job—nor did we have any choice in our surroundings. The first August we lived here I went out to the backyard one day and discovered apples on the ground. Apparently we had an apple tree. A huge one. For weeks I picked up a dozen or so apples each time I went outside. I’d bring them into the kitchen, wash the bugs and dirt off them, cut out the bruised parts and any holes left by slugs or birds, peel and core them, then chop them up, douse them with a little lemon juice, and put them by cupfuls in zip-lock bags labeled—7 cups Aug 12 2004—and pop them in the freezer.

The next summer I anticipated apple season but we got just a few. The third summer I didn’t expect many, only to get a lot of apples like the first year. I noticed part of the tree was dead and decided this probably explained why it bore fruit every other year.

Then one winter, gale force winds broke a big limb off the tree. I cut up as much of the broken limb as I could, but the base was too thick for me to saw by hand. One day I heard a chain saw being operated somewhere in the neighborhood and scouted out the source. The chain saw operator sliced up the limb for me as well as cut off the jagged remains and dead limbs from the tree. All for 20 pounds sterling. That summer we didn’t get any apples, and I wasn’t surprised; the time to prune a plant is in the fall before it stores up energy over the winter for the next season of growth. This tree had lost a large part of itself in the middle of winter and didn’t get pruned until the spring, leaving it depleted.

The following year, however, the tree produced apples again. A ton of apples. I was back in business. I refilled freezer bags with crisp, tart chunks and wrote the new day and year on top of the old—the number of cups and the month stayed the same.

Now it’s apple season and I’m in the zone—the Zen—of peeling, coring, chopping, and freezing. When I go out to harvest fruit I walk in a spiral beneath the tree span because apples hide like Easter eggs in the nooks and crannies of the roots and under the tall grass and overgrown beds, and they look just like the leaves that have fallen. All sporting their autumnal camouflage of bright red, sour green, and golden brown. Sometimes my feet find apples before my eyes do, when I step on something hard.

After circling in one direction I turn and walk in the opposite direction. Always I see apples that I missed the first time around. I’m sure this is one of the lessons of nature, and it’s a good one, but I don’t let it distract me from the main point: apple pie. So yes, they take over my life for some weeks, but I get to enjoy them all year.