Robert Frost's poem about being tired of picking apples brought back memories. He's tired of it. Once he thought he'd love apple trees. How nice! But it was too much!
When I was newly married, we lived in a tenement. We saved and saved to buy our own house. When we finally had enough money we bought an old WWII bungalow. It was a four-room house with half a dirt cellar, a crawl space for an attic, and one closet. We thought we had died and gone to heaven.
Best of all was the backyard. The garden was full of tulips, even black ones. They were a deep purple that gave the appearance of being black. There was a cherry tree that was so beautiful that the children in the school across the street were brought over to our yard to view it when it blossomed. But my favorite jewel in this paradise was a crab apple tree.
Imagine. I could make apple pies with my own homegrown apples.
I made apple pies for all the five years we lived there. I picked the apples, most of them fell on the ground. They were small and misshapen and some were insect-ridden but I thought I had hit the jackpot (for the first few years). They were so small that it took forever to peel them. Sometimes I wondered if it were worth peeling because all I would get is a couple of slices. But when you're young with eyes full of the glory of homemaking you don't see the wormholes but rather the apple pie. You don't smell the vinegar but rather the freshly baked aroma.
When we outgrew our little bungalow I said goodbye to peeling crab apples. I now use just a few apples to make a pie, and to think of the hundreds I used to wash, peel and slice to make just one pie! The memories of those halcyon days are cherished but like Robert Frost's After Apple Picking, I got tired of it.
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
When I was newly married, we lived in a tenement. We saved and saved to buy our own house. When we finally had enough money we bought an old WWII bungalow. It was a four-room house with half a dirt cellar, a crawl space for an attic, and one closet. We thought we had died and gone to heaven.
Best of all was the backyard. The garden was full of tulips, even black ones. They were a deep purple that gave the appearance of being black. There was a cherry tree that was so beautiful that the children in the school across the street were brought over to our yard to view it when it blossomed. But my favorite jewel in this paradise was a crab apple tree.
Imagine. I could make apple pies with my own homegrown apples.
I made apple pies for all the five years we lived there. I picked the apples, most of them fell on the ground. They were small and misshapen and some were insect-ridden but I thought I had hit the jackpot (for the first few years). They were so small that it took forever to peel them. Sometimes I wondered if it were worth peeling because all I would get is a couple of slices. But when you're young with eyes full of the glory of homemaking you don't see the wormholes but rather the apple pie. You don't smell the vinegar but rather the freshly baked aroma.
When we outgrew our little bungalow I said goodbye to peeling crab apples. I now use just a few apples to make a pie, and to think of the hundreds I used to wash, peel and slice to make just one pie! The memories of those halcyon days are cherished but like Robert Frost's After Apple Picking, I got tired of it.
After Apple-Picking
BY ROBERT FROST
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
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