picking apples

Sunday, August 11:

   Seven very large, very beautiful, very unripe apples appeared in the red ceramic fruit bowl while I was out.  Questioned, an ingenuous five-year-old declared that “I got them all off of one tree!”  Not, it turns out, the apple tree in the barnyard, which produces small fruit ever available for casual pickers; no, the child, understanding completely where food comes from, has carefully harvested every jealously-guarded apple from our two-year-old prize Golden Delicious tree in the small orchard.

   Isn’t that what they were there for?