Today was a perfect fall day. I had the luxury of idle time and sat out on the back deck in a cushioned, comfortable chair. The air was crisp, the sky brilliant blue. However, my thoughts weren't of the lake in view or fir trees all around , but of apples.
Apples and fall go together like spring and chocolate bunnies or summer and corn on the cob. I remember when I was a grade school student at St. Rose of Lima , my mother packed a red apple every day in my metal lunch box. Apparently mom believed in the old adage , 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' . And dunking for apples and candied apples were always a hit come All Hollow's Eve.
While sitting under a cool sun, and enjoying the silence about me, I thought of paintings I had seen by famed artist's Van Gogh and Cezanne, and how their still life images brighten the soul. Then I wondered about writers and apples. Of course the first, and most famous story about an apple is found in the book of Genesis 2:7 when God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit. Then Johnny Appleseed came to mind, a legendary character who went about the land planting apple seeds. And a poem by Robert Frost
After Apple - Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough
Apples are like a sweet tonic to me, when I was just a little girl and didn't want to eat vegetables , my Grandpa Austin would tell me , whatever food I objected to, was applesauce , then I'd happily eat what was on my plate. Through the years it became a family joke, whenever something was served for dinner I thought I didn't like, someone would say, "It's applesauce" .
Edgar A. Guest writes in his poem The Apple Tree
There 's nothing damn has builded with the
beauty or the charm
That can touch the simple grandeur of the
monarch of the farm.
There's never any picture from human
beings brush
That has ever caught the redness of a single
apple's blush.
Just as the artist portrays the image he/she sees, like the beauty of the apple, with paints on canvas, perhaps as writers, we can do the same with our words. The next time you see an apple in a bowl or on the ground, fallen from a tree, take a closer look, then describe its essence in prose or story, to reflect the sweet memory it invokes.
Apples and fall go together like spring and chocolate bunnies or summer and corn on the cob. I remember when I was a grade school student at St. Rose of Lima , my mother packed a red apple every day in my metal lunch box. Apparently mom believed in the old adage , 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' . And dunking for apples and candied apples were always a hit come All Hollow's Eve.
While sitting under a cool sun, and enjoying the silence about me, I thought of paintings I had seen by famed artist's Van Gogh and Cezanne, and how their still life images brighten the soul. Then I wondered about writers and apples. Of course the first, and most famous story about an apple is found in the book of Genesis 2:7 when God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit. Then Johnny Appleseed came to mind, a legendary character who went about the land planting apple seeds. And a poem by Robert Frost
After Apple - Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough
Apples are like a sweet tonic to me, when I was just a little girl and didn't want to eat vegetables , my Grandpa Austin would tell me , whatever food I objected to, was applesauce , then I'd happily eat what was on my plate. Through the years it became a family joke, whenever something was served for dinner I thought I didn't like, someone would say, "It's applesauce" .
Edgar A. Guest writes in his poem The Apple Tree
There 's nothing damn has builded with the
beauty or the charm
That can touch the simple grandeur of the
monarch of the farm.
There's never any picture from human
beings brush
That has ever caught the redness of a single
apple's blush.
Just as the artist portrays the image he/she sees, like the beauty of the apple, with paints on canvas, perhaps as writers, we can do the same with our words. The next time you see an apple in a bowl or on the ground, fallen from a tree, take a closer look, then describe its essence in prose or story, to reflect the sweet memory it invokes.
