The Most Generous Tree
a reflection
The apple is my favorite fruit.
Sure, there are berries I enjoy and more exotic foods to sample as a treat, but you really can’t beat the apple for versatility, reliability, and comfort.
And September is the apple-lover’s season.
In the old days, students used to bring an apple for the teacher, because citizens paid for education, not governments, and peasants pay for treasure with what they have.
In September, we have apples.
Apples are a gift. They are so common that we often forget.
But to make the acquaintance of an apple tree is an experience you don’t soon forget. They are generous. Unripe apples can be added to other fruits to thicken them into jams and jellies. A perfect apple, picked at the right time, can be stored in a cool place for months and months with zero impact on quality. Even overripe apples are delicious, cooked down into fragrant applesauce.
The apple can be sweetened into pies and cakes or made savory, long-cooked with onions and sauerkraut and caraway seed into the heartiest autumn dish. It can be turned into cider. It can be frozen. It can be dried.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away? Of course! Wellness is the only logical result of such delicious grace!
There is a long tradition of honor—and rightly so—for the trees of the orchard.
In January, on the Twelfth Night after the Christmas feast, I pour cider around the roots of the tree and thank God for another harvest. This is called wassailing the apple tree.
Wassail, a festive greeting, which means be in good health!
My most fervent prayer, whispered into the bare winter branches, is that this tree who nourishes me so thoroughly would thrive, would grow, would sweeten.
Wassail, old friend! Wassail!
And if I listen very carefully, head tilted just-so, I can hear my whisper echoed back to me.
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I'm craving an apple pie and cider right now!
Your words are lovely 🍎 There’s a house around the corner from us, it sits on a rather busy street, but their yard is “fenced in” by apple trees! I see them nearly every day and every day, I gasp a little at the beauty and now that the trees are heavy with fruit, I exclaim “apples!! Beautiful apples” every time we drive by.