Tasting Apple, Tasting Life

Our family visited Wilson's Orchard on a late August afternoon. An old man and his tractor gave us a fun ride from the entrance area to a land covered with thousands of apple trees. It was the best time to pick Ginger Gold and William's Pride.

With either a pale green or a soft yellow peel, the Ginger Gold apple looked smooth and tasted fresh with the last flavor of its rawness. Passing the lanes of the Ginger Gold, there were the Honeycrisp, our favorite kind of apple from supermarket. We had to taste them despite they don't ripen until the first week of September. Crisp, juicy, each bite of a Honeycrisp seduced our taste buds with its sweet-tart flavor. We then found the Paula Red, an unknown kind that was surprisingly irresistable for its color and taste. After putting many of them in our baskets, we wished to take home more of theses dark-red apples. But, that didn't happen. Red Free, red as the Paula Red, didn't have any crunchiness in it. Burgundy, looking enticingly beautiful, tasted unbearably tart. Maybe they are only for making Christmas wreaths with red berries to decorate doors.

The aroma wasn't all that pleasant on the site. Few apple varieties that ripened during the previous weeks were rotten and smelly, living the last stage of the life cycle. But next to this scene of decay was the sign of harvest on most of the trees around. Apple time is in September. No wonder Song of September is named for one of the varieties.

After filling our baskets with three or four varieties, we were back in the store at the entrance. More goodies were waiting for us. We picked two jars of jam, one strawberry and one golden apricot. Four fresh-baked apple turnovers for our snacking and a 11-inch apple pie to go into the trunk.

While leaving Wilson's Orchard, we saw the old man again driving his tractor slowly up the hill, back to pick up more apple pickers. A happy old man, who knows every tree and every inch of the land in this orchard. His work simply makes apple and life both taste a bit sweeter.