Labor Day weekend was remarkable for two reasons: 1) It was quiet. My usually festive and very LOUD Caribbean neighbors were NOT having a party or a barbecue so there was none of the requisite soca, reggae and house music blasting at triple digit decibel levels, and 2) I picked the first apples of the season from my tree. This crop ripened a little earlier than in previous years and a bountiful crop it is. My apples are organic. While in some circles that means wholesome, natural and without chemical pesticides, in my backyard, more often than not, that translates into insect-ridden and bird-pecked. The tree is just too darned big to be effectively sprayed against insect pests. As for the birds, you can see from my photos that I have a healthy parrot population enjoying the literal fruits of my labor. Between the bugs and the birds, I lose more apples than I'm able to harvest. Nevertheless I love my apple tree.
In spite of the rather large losses I incur every apple season, I manage to save enough to merit a decent pie or two and more than a few apple empanadas (apples in a dough crust, deep-fried, glazed, then dusted with confectioner's sugar. YUM!). This year's batch even yielded some that were good enough to eat out of hand. Although I wait patiently all summer for this moment to arrive, I greet it with a melancholy grin and a small sigh of resignation. Ripe apples are the harbingers of autumn and are as sure a sign of summer's end as the waning daylight. It's downhill to the holidays from here, which seem to come earlier and earlier each year, thanks to guerilla marketing tactics.
I can't stop the relentless march of the seasons but facing it becomes a whole lot easier with a slice of hot apple pie.
Ballo ergo sum,
Always and All Ways,
- Gitana
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