Apple Picking

On September 29th, Jon took the day off of work. He told me the day before, and I felt such relief. I hadn't realized how much I had wanted to avoid being alone that day. It marked two years since my two youngest brothers, Josh and Timothy had been killed in a car accident. Last year I was with my family, and we went to the grave together. I remember thinking that that day wasn't as hard as I had expected it to be. It was almost as if the 28th had been harder. This year, again, the actual 29th was not as awful as I feared. I couldn't be with my family in Michigan, but we spend the day together as our new little family. It was good to mark the day with something. I can't talk much more about that at the moment though.

So here is what we did.

Jon researched and found an apple orchard in the mountains. It started off as a chilly, but pretty day. We dressed Nathan up warmly, and then took off!

I've noticed that we do not have many family pictures. I took this picture at the orchard, and rested it on the hood of the car. The original was quite squee-hawed, but I fixed it here. (he he he, there's a story to that word.)

As you can see, Nathan was very impressed with the trees.

It looks like the patterns on my jacket sleeve were more interesting than the view.

Jon, incidentally doesn't like apples - raw anyway. He likes them in pies. So this trip was certainly more for my benefit than his. But you should have seen his face light up when the person at the orchard gave us directions to a certain kind of apples. He asked us if we had four wheel drive. Jon loved that part!



None of the trees were beautiful. In fact they were quite ugly. They weren't what I had in mind with the Garden of Eden (if that was even an apple anyway). I also had Anne of Avonlea in my head where Anne and that strict headmistress lady are picking apples. That was a pretty tree. The fruit was not shiny and spotless like at the store either. It made me think about they days when kids would bring shiny big apples for their teacher. The reason that was special was because those used to be rather rare!

So those were my deep apple ponderings.