When Apples are Falling--Climb the Tree!

Sometimes you just have to get out of the house

 in order to enjoy your insanity a little more.

You've got teenagers, and you've got younger children, and you've got a little girl in a cast

and you've got brain fog and you've got a recipe for insanity.

So--

you add apples to the whole mess because a neighbor somewhere in town has apple trees

and the apples are just downright falling all over the gutter and grill and ground.  

And you muster up your courage

and you just ask--and behold, "Ask about the apples, and they shall be given.

Seek for a fun project for your energetic children, and ye shall find.

Knock--and as you pick and shake the branches, apples will come a knockin' down all over the place--

including right square on your head if you're in the way!

It's amazing how the recipe turns out just right.

You get to include another family with a little boy who grins from ear to ear while sitting on a ladder

picking apples and handing them down to you.

And neighbor children come running and you get to talk to people you never talked to before.

And you capture a few photos of the beautiful flowers growing around the humble little home of the little old couple from Spain who are so happy to have someone picking and using their extra apples. 

 Especially when you hand them a fresh apple pie you and your daughter just made that morning. You get to talk about their flowers and listen to them talk about their peach trees and all sorts of things about themselves.

Hollyhocks have such a cheerful, homey sounding name.

 

And then the neighbor of this neighbor hollers over that there are more apples on his side of the tree, and your middle boy clambers up the second tree and tosses down more apples,

and that neighbor is eager to talk, too.

He talks all about someone he knows in Denver who has an apple tree and how the man discarded many bushels of apples, until someone who tends the elephants at the zoo

came by and asked for apples for the elephants!  

(Here's hoping he wasn't hinting we were a bunch of elephants, though I wouldn't blame him! :) :)

  

"You can climb the roof," our new friend said. So the boys carefully climbed up on the low roof and picked some more of those wonderful apples. There was a long-handled apple picker that came in very handy. Timmy became quite adept at using it.

 

 You can choose whether you climb the walls,

or climb roofs and apple trees.

It's up to you.

And so maybe you can't climb the trees like your middle son,

and maybe you can't carry all the heavy bags like the young ones,

 maybe all you can do is haul ladders and hand empty bags up and grab full ones down and tie them up and gather up the best apples on the ground away from the yellow jackets, and drive the van and make the plans and coordinate who goes where and who does what...

And maybe while another mom takes her boy and your boys to go pick more another place, 

all you can do is collapse for a little while

while that mom's wee little girls meander through their temporary home,

and your daughters help them with crafts and put the enchiladas in the oven

and start the vegetables sauteeing for a picnic supper.

But it was just one more chance to watch God answer the prayer of a mother who is choosing 

day after day after day 

to walk by faith, to live in hope, to laugh at herself more, to judge others less,

to ask and receive, to seek and find, to knock until the door opens,

and to enjoy the bliss of life's fruit hanging waiting for the picking.

You get to choose.

Drudgery and doldrums,

or freshness and fruit and friendliness and freedom.