Peeling Apples Under The Apple Tree

I sat in the shade of the apple tree, a refrigerator drawer full of apples and a pot on one side of me, and a garbage pail in front of me.

It didn’t take the yellow jackets long to find us.

Mostly it was just one or two who landed on the cut apples in the pot.   Every once in a while more would come.  I found if I didn’t make any sudden movements, and just kept cutting the apples, they’d go away.

Once when a few flew too close to my head and wouldn’t leave, I got up and dumped the pail of apple skins and cores over the fence for the donkeys and sheep to eat.  The whole time thinking…there’s enough apples for us all. 

One or two yellow jackets landed on my hand.  Maybe they smelled the juice from the apples as I cut them.  But didn’t stay long.  There wasn’t much there for them.

Fate surprised me by hanging around me rather than sitting by the barnyard gate as usual.  I figured out why I when I felt someone lick my foot.  When I looked down at where an apple skin had fallen on my bare foot,  there was only a single apple seed that Fate left behind.

That’s the first time I can remember Fate licking me.

Zip showed up too.  He hung around under the chair, rolling on his back and flirting with me.  But I was too busy to scratch his ears.

Like the yellow jackets, he didn’t stay long.

The apples are sweeter than they were last week, so I didn’t add any maple syrup to the pot.  I just cooked the apples with a little water and cinnamon.

Now our freezer is full of apple sauce.

I don’t know if I’ll be making any more.    Many of the apples so big and juicy, if they didn’t have spots and weren’t a bit bruised from the fall I’d think they came from the grocery store.  And they’re so sweet we can eat them as they fall.

As long as the chickens, yellow jackets, ants and Fate and Zinnia don’t get to them first.