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There is something about an apple. More than most other fruits, it has significance beyond its simple self.
Witness the famous computer company, whose logo identifies the fruit but emphasizes the bite that has been taken. Ah, the forbidden fruit – right here in your hands. All the time, demanding your attention. Directing your day. Tracking your location. Listening to your conversation. Predicting your decisions. Selling your attention. Well, maybe there was more truth than intended in their advertising back in the day when they chose that logo.
Unlike many other fruits, apples are durable. They do not bruise as easily nor rot as readily, they travel well, and can be kept for longer periods of times and under less controlled circumstances. Like potatoes and root vegetables, they can be stored in the cellar to provide sustenance through the winter.
Annually it is part of my autumn routine to visit orchards and buy large quantities of apples. Right about now, I should be heading west to get a half bushel of eating apples and a half bushel of pie apples from among the earlier varieties to be harvested. Then, after Veteran’s Day, I drive a bit further and buy a full bushel of my favorite eating apples, plus some more pie apples, that are among the latest varieties to be harvested. Last year this bushel lasted into March, despite how much Fr. Swink enjoys devouring one on frequent occasion.
But this year I am not sure what I will do, because there is no apple harvest. None. It was destroyed in late April by a hard frost. All along the eastern edge of the Appalachian range, some of the finest apple orchards in the country are coming up empty.
As some people welcome the end of summer and the cooler temperatures of autumn that arrived this week as if commanded by the calendar, it is easy to forget what a long, cold winter and late, cold spring we had this year. I feared at the time that the stone fruits would suffer, as they often and easily do, and sure enough, peaches plums and cherries were obliterated while we waited in vain for the weather to warm. But that is more common, unfortunately, as stone fruit trees blossom early and are vulnerable.
But apples! MY apples! What has happened here? I have already resorted to buying apples from the grocery store, shipped in from God knows where. I guess they are fine – see the durability of apples, referenced above – but they are not local and they are brutally expensive, especially compared to the price per bushel at the orchard. What sadness.
Still I connive to find a better option, some other supplier of apple varietals in the bulk and at the price I prefer. Whether such connivance bear fruit, I do not know. But the sad fact is that this entire catastrophe was thrust upon us months ago while we were paying attention to other things, pursuing other goals, and yearning for other rewards. Only now is inflicted the privation that was prepared then. Cherries were missing in June and peaches in August, but the sting of apples’ absence hits in October and November.
There is nothing that we can do to change it. Some friend of mine with whom I shared my lament suggested that there must be something that can be done in the orchard during the freeze to protect the apples, like they do in Florida with the orange crop, spraying them with water that encases the fruit in protective ice. But we cannot go back to late April and change things, nor does such a method exist anyway. The organic reality is irreversible and irretrievable.
Like the bite out of that fruit on the logo in everyone’s pocket, there is no going back, no un-doing what long since has been done. The genie stands surly outside the bottle, preparing new destruction. Only after time has passed are consequences revealed, most shockingly when the decisions and the actions were our own. Regrettable results make us rue the day, crying for a do-over that remains out of reach.
There is something about an apple. More than most other fruits, it has significance beyond its simple self. Before and after the bite, it reminds us of sin.
Monsignor Smith
