Millions of Peaches!

Okay, not millions but about 25 pounds, which I figure is around 12 pies...which means one peach thing a month for the winter if we can manage not to eat them all in the next week! I love picking fruit for the winter storage. This is one of those things that if I were a memoir writer I would write about. I would write about the first time I remember going fruit picking...I'm thinking it must have been Valley Vineyard but possibly not. I remember it was strawberries and on a hill. And all I can really picture in my mind is a green leaf and some mud and my hand. It's one of those very fuzzy memories. Then there are the more clear ones: The time Mausie and I got lost in who-knows-where-rural Ohio and we stopped in her old Buick to save a box turtle crossing the road. There was the time we went raspberry picking and it was so hot and horrible and buggy that I just wanted to cry. There was the time we went strawberry picking in some strange little field next to a natural spring and again it was hot, horrible, and buggy only this time mom kept worrying we would step on a snake. There were the cider pops that were amazing because they just turned back to juice in your mouth from thier icy state and the blueberries, blueberries, blueberries...always picking more!

And of course then there was the first time I took Daniel blueberry picking. He had never gone before and didn't really know anything about it. Lo and behold he's a champion picker and outpicks me every time. If my Mausie had known about his ability she would have probably told me to marry him a few years sooner (or at least to have loaned his skills out to her:)



But of course, there is much more to fruit picking than all the fun. For me it's about this thing I talked about in my last post about living towards the future. Sure, it definitely satisfies this urge I have to constantly store things. I am well known for my ability to horde special food and candy for months just so that 'it's there'. I don't wear new clothes until they have been in my closet for a few weeks just so that they 'stay new'. So I'm sure that it has something to do with that minor obsessive habit. But really, it's about being able to hope. And not hope in a way that's all dreamy and sun-shiny. But actually doing stuff in the present that captures the future right than and there. It's about biting into that peach on a hot August day and being able to forecast to that first day in January where all you can do is make a hot peach cobbler to ward off the chill.


Yesterday standing in that field eating peaches Daniel and I just smiled and time really stood still. Because, for me, picking fruit is about the way that it is so very possible to be in the present, the past, and the future all at once.

Mmmmmmmmmm.