by Angela Sanford
While the scent of fresh lilacs fills my nostrils and electrifies my soul these days, it is the vision of trees loaded with apple blossoms that triggers my fondest memories.
Some memories are brief – like sitting high in an apple tree in Wakefield, Quebec as a young girl, watching a bear below us meandering slow through the trees. We could only hope that the bear didn’t see us and it did not. Or the only spring of my high school career that our prom fell on the same weekend as apple blossom weekend and the gymnasium was filled with soft pink petals.
Other memories linger for longer periods and have left tiny caverns in my heart as I recall their tender moments. Paula, Karla, and I climbing high into the tree tops in Gram and Grandad’s small orchard, escaping our siblings down below. Aunt Judy hoarding the salt shaker while she snacked on green apples, picked long before they were ripe but she had the rest of doing the same. Once those August apples were ripe, collecting bags of apples, preferably directly from the tree and not the soft mushy ones that had collapsed to the ground ahead of our arrival, in order to bake the most incredible apple pie – not too sweet, slightly tart but just right with a slice of old cheddar cheese.
But the memory that haunts me whenever I see apple blossoms charges my emotions greatly.
It’s late September and the first frost of the fall has touched the morning ground, but it’s now late in the day. I exit the school bus, driven by a very jovial bus driver, just short of the Northfield Road and begin to walk the short trip back to our house. My mouth waters with anticipation as I approach our property and I cut short across the ditch and directly into the orchard, reaching the nearest apple tree to the road. Its not my favourite variety, that’s the August Apples or yellow transparents, but just after the first frost this red delight comes in a very close second.
I pluck the crispy apple from its home and take my initial bite. The crunch can, surely, be heard by Gram, who I know, without any doubt, is rocking alongside her kitchen window. When I cross in front of that window, she throws me a wave and a contagious smile, and I dip around the front and enter into the porch and, then, kitchen to share the events of the day still crunching heavily between quick tales.
As the stories wind down, back through the front door I head, apple core in hand, until I can toss the core into the hay field behind the house, challenging my arm to throw it as far as I can but barely making it past the electric fence, before making my way to our house, next door.
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