Of Apple Pie, Planting Seeds, and Thanksgiving
The scent of apples means Thanksgiving to me. I remember going with my mom to the plant nursery in our small town in southern Minnesota every autumn. Covering the dirt floor of the greenhouse had been bushels of apples in wicker baskets with signs labeling them: Royal Gala, Granny Smith, Ginger Gold, Braeburn, McIntosh and Nickajack.
The nursery owner cut off wedges for us to sample with a sharp knife, as the juice from crisp, tart apples ran down our chins. Mom loaded up the back of the station wagon with several varieties and then she got to work, peeling, coring, and processing the apples into slices for pies and applesauce. Every Thanksgiving, an apple pie sat next to a pumpkin pie at our feast.
When we moved to Arizona, apple-filled rooms became a distant memory of my childhood. I learned how to do things with grapefruits, oranges, and other citrus instead, so when we heard of a lone apple tree about two miles from our cabin in northern Arizona, our ears perked up.
Fresh, tree-picked apples! Nostalgia gives way to reality.
“Shouldn’t we put on long sleeves,” I asked my husband Kevin as we loaded an apple picker and ladder into the truck.
“No thorns on apples trees,” he said.
The elk and deer had feasted on everything reachable from the ground, so Kevin nestled the ladder into the branches of an old gnarled tree, wishing in about two minutes he had worn long sleeves as the pokey branches left long scratches on exposed skin. With the picker, he extended his reach as far as possible in a precarious balancing act, moving the ladder several times to get just one more.
apple picking
Rustic would be a good term to describe the apples we gathered. Irregular sizes. Bird pecked. Hard bits. But the apples tasted of long-ago memories in homemade sauce, crisps and as natural pectin in jars of jelly. And yes, slices await in the freezer for a Thanksgiving apple pie.
wild apples
As I peeled apples, I couldn’t help but wonder how that apple tree had come to grow in such a remote location. Maybe from an apple core tossed out of someone’s car window on a day of sightseeing? Or from a hunter out spotting for elk? However it happened, that random seed grew into a tree that has produced apples for years.
Sometimes we are very intentional in the fruit we sow and the seeds we plant. We aren’t surprised when we see good things happen in our places of influence. But I think most of the time, we have no idea. We invest years of faithful service and aren’t even aware when plants have sprung up. 2 Corinthians 9:6 reminds us to keep planting because “whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”
I think eternity will be a fabulous place of gathering apples.
This article recently appeared in the SanTan Sun.
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Want to experience the Christmas story in a new way this year? Over at Bible Journaling Connection, we will be doing 1-3 verses every day with doodles, artwork, poetry, journaling and prayers. We would love to have you join us. We start on Monday, Nov 30 - Dec 11, with plenty of breathing space left in the holiday season. Also on Instagram.
