The kids and I spent the afternoon picking the rest of the apples up in the orchard. A perfect Autumn day all around, in the crisp air you could smell the apples as you went through the gate, fluffy white clouds hanging overhead, kids laughing together, you really couldn't get a day much better.
Then again this is my life we're talking about...
The apple trees were completely covered with sweet, perfectly ripe, nearly blemish free apples. Well they seemed blemish free until you picked them. On closer inspection the tops of many of the apples had holes in them. I knew just who had pecked those holes. Huge flocks of crows were known to descend in mass to use our orchard as a buffet...let's have a little apple here, a grape there, maybe a pear over here... a juicy marionberry for dessert. I spent many a summer afternoon running into the orchard waving my arms like a lunatic yelling at the pesky birds to leave my fruit alone.
Anyway some of the apples had holes in them...no problems, they weren't big holes and could easily be cut around in the process of making applesauce. The problem wasn't the holes but what evil creatures hiding in the holes. Yep...yellow jackets! I reached up, picked the first apple off the tree then looked down at it wondering why it felt like it was moving! As I opened my hand I saw two yellow jackets backing out of a crow hole. I dropped the apple like a hot potato as the yellow jackets fully emerged to start dive bombing my head in retaliation for disturbing their feast. As I was being attacked I noticed the baby reaching his fat little hand up to pick an apple off the tree..."NO"...I screamed, scaring him to death and making him howl at the top of his lungs. Mama being attacked by yellow jackets, baby screaming his head off. Yeah this afternoon is off to a perfect start.
Ughhh I swear nothing can be simple. I had to pick some hole free apples for the kids, deposit them down at the bottom of the orchard away from the bees with the hopes that they would go unnoticed by the wicked insects. Then I had to cautiously pick each apple with the knowledge that any one of them could be inhabited by those little bees from hell. I took forever.
Now if you all are thinking I'm just a pansy, it would be best to remember the stinger in the armpit that I endured fixing the fence just a few short weeks ago. So I am completely justifed being a pansy.
After I finally finished the painstaking process of picking the apples and chasing the yellow jackets away from the kids more than once we finally had as many as we could haul in the little red wagon (some farmers use wheelbarrows, or tractors, I use a Radio Flyer to haul fruit, lol!) . We took them back to the garage where it was cool to store until I could make sauce out of them.
When long suffering hubby got home he wanted to know why his garage was full of yellow jackets...sorry honey!
