Category: apple tree

Pale Applesauce Clouds

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The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples,
big yellow pie apples, light in the hand,
their skins freckled, the stems knobby
and thick with bark, as if the tree
could not bear to let the apple go.
Baskets of apples circle the back door,
fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.

My mother and my grandmother are
running the apple brigade. My mother,
always better with machines, is standing
at the apple peeler; my grandmother,
more at home with a paring knife,
faces her across the breadboard.
My mother takes an apple in her hand,

She pushes it neatly onto the sharp
prong and turns the handle that turns
the apple that swivels the blade pressed
tight against the apple’s side and peels
the skin away in long curling strips that
twist and fall to a bucket on the floor.
The apples, coming off the peeler,

Are winding staircases, little accordions,
slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until
my grandmother’s paring knife goes slicing
through the rings and they become apple
pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon
they will be married to butter and live with
cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after.
~Joyce Sutphen, “Apple Season” from Coming Back to the Body.

I liked how the starry blue lid
of that saucepan lifted and puffed,
then settled back on a thin
hotpad of steam, and the way
her kitchen filled with the warm,
wet breath of apples, as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they’d come cold and sour
from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in
close to the fire. She was too busy
to put in her two cents’ worth
talking to apples. Squeezing
her dentures with wrinkly lips,
she had to jingle and stack
the bright brass coins of the lids
and thoughtfully count out
the red rubber rings, then hold
each jar, to see if it was clean,
to a window that looked out
through her back yard into Iowa.
And with every third or fourth jar
she wiped steam from her glasses,
using the hem of her apron,
printed with tiny red sailboats
that dipped along with leaf-green
banners snapping, under puffs
of pale applesauce clouds
scented with cinnamon and cloves,
the only boats under sail
for at least two thousand miles.
~Ted Kooser “Applesauce” from Delights and Shadow

1.

Through the night
the apples
outside my window
one by one let go
their branches and
drop to the lawn.
I can’t see, but hear
the stem-snap, the plummet
through leaves, then
the final thump against the ground.

Sometimes two
at once, or one
right after another.
During long moments of silence
I wait
and wonder about the bruised bodies,
the terror of diving through air, and
think I’ll go tomorrow
to find the newly fallen, but they
all look alike lying there
dewsoaked, disappearing before me.

2.

I lie beneath my window listening  
to the sound of apples dropping in

the yard, a syncopated code I long to know,
which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know

the meaning of what I hear, each dull  
thud of unseen apple-

body, the earth  
falling to earth

once and forever, over  
and over.
~ Li-Young Lee “Falling: The Code” from Rose

I tell you, folks, all politics is like applesauce.
~Will Rogers

Once again, it’s applesauce season on our farm. The number of windfall apples lying on the ground is exponentially increasing, so I can put off the task no longer.

The old apple trees in our orchard are primarily antique varieties rarely grown any longer. I have the choice of a number of varieties: a Baldwin or two, some Pippins, a few Kings, and some Dutch Mignons, a russet apple undistinguished in appearance, not at all pretty, and easy to pass by for something more showy.

It takes no time at all to fill several large boxes. Sadly, some apples are already beyond hope; they lay rotting, half consumed by hornets, slugs, deer, possum, raccoons and other critters — so I let them be.

The task of washing, peeling and coring organic apples is time consuming. They require a fair amount of preparation: the bruised spots must be cut out, as well as the worm holes and tracks. The apples are cut to the core and sliced into the simmering pot to be stirred and slowly cooked down to sauce. Before long, before my eyes, together they become a pale yellow mash, blending their varied flavors together.

However the smooth sweetness of this wonderful sauce is owed to the Dutch Mignon. It is a sublime sauce apple despite its humble unassuming appearance. Used alone, it would lack the “stand out” flavors of the other apple varieties, but as it cooks down, it becomes a foundation allowing the other apples to blend their unique qualities.

If I’m feeling really homespun, I marry the sublime with cinnamon and sugar, to create something happily ever after.

So it should be with the fellowship of diverse people and so should it be during a painful political season.

We are bruised, wormy, but salvageable. We are far better together than we are separate. And through the process, with perhaps a sprinkle of cinnamon and sweetness, we are transformed into something far better than how we began.

This Failing Light

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Day after day, day after still day,
The summer has begun to pass away.
Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call,
And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall.
The meadow and the orchard grass are mown,
And the meadowlark’s house is cut down.

The little lantern bugs have doused their fires,
The swallows sit in rows along the wires.
Berry and grape appear among the flowers
Tangled against the wall in secret bowers,
And cricket now begins to hum the hours
Remaining to the passion’s slow procession
Down from the high place and the golden session
Wherein the sun was sacrificed for us.

A failing light, no longer numinous,
Now frames the long and solemn afternoons
Where butterflies regret their closed cocoons.
We reach the place unripe, and made to know
As with a sudden knowledge that we go
Away forever, all hope of return
Cut off, hearing the crackle of the burn-
ing blade behind us, and the terminal sound
Of apples dropping on the dry ground.
~Howard Nemerov “Summer’s Elegy” from Collected Poems

As far as I can see this autumn haze
That spreading in the evening air both ways,
Makes the new moon look anything but new,
And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue,
Is all the smoke from one poor house alone
With but one chimney it can call its own;
So close it will not light an early light,
Keeping its life so close and out of sight
No one for hours has set a foot outdoors
So much as to take care of evening chores.
The inmates may be lonely women-folk.
I want to tell them that with all this smoke
They prudently are spinning their cocoon
And anchoring it to an earth and moon
From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,—
Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it.
~Robert Frost “The Cocoon”

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth’s green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.
~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.

I too regret the closed cocoon,
so seemingly safe at the time —
once launched before being ready,
there is no returning.

In this fading, failing light, I feel undone,
weepy at harvest, gathering urgently,
not wanting anything to go to waste,
trying to memorialize it all as it changes.

I part again from you, Summer –
your gifts seemed endless
until you yourself ended –
a reminder that someday,
so must I.

photo by Bob Tjoelker

The Mundane Becomes Miraculous

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Last night
we were laying in bed
when my husband
rolled over and said,
“Do you hear birds?”
I said I heard
the laundry
dragging itself along
the inside of the dryer
as it turned.

My grandparents’ neighbor,
Doris, once said she heard
birds in the chimney.
Her in-home helper confessed
they weren’t birds—
she’d had a baby in the night
without knowing
she was pregnant.

Poems are like that,
insisting on being born,
heard, making themselves
known
as soon as we’re quiet
and still. We hear
birdsong in the ordinary,
and it sings us awake
in the dark
until the mundane becomes
miraculous.
~Elizabeth Wickland “Do You Hear Birds?”

Like people or dogs, each day is unique
and has its own personality quirks
which can easily be seen if you look closely.
But there are so few days as compared to people,
not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising
if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people.

But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed,
unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle.

For some reason we like to see days pass,
even though most of us claim
we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time.

We examine each day before us with barely a glance
and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for,
and wait in a bored sort of way for the next,
when we are convinced,
our lives will start for real.

Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted,
as some days are,
with the right amounts of sunlight and shade,
and a light breeze scented with a perfume made
from the mixture of fallen apples,
corn stubble, dry oak leaves,
and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.
~Tom Hennen  “The Life of a Day”

Age concentrates the mind.
The moment you realize you will no longer do something
you’ve done all your life.
The moment you realize that you will now need to do something you’ve never had to do before.
The moment you realize that what used to be will never be the same.

Some of this could lend itself to melancholy.
But there is also a bigness to such moments that allows for wonder.
A sense that you can’t quite comprehend it all.

Like any life, mine has had its pain,
yet from the outset it seems to have been graced
by unbelievable people and events.

An anthology of miracles.
~Roger Rosenblatt from “The World is a Room with a Piano Waiting to be Played”

I am ashamed to admit I squander time shamelessly,
blind and deaf to what is happening around me,
waiting for that particularly special day
I always dreamed of,
tossing off mundane yet irreplaceable moments
as somehow not measuring up nor exciting enough.

The shock is:
there have been nearly 40 years
of such ordinary days on this farm,
one passing by after another,
emerging fresh each morning
from the mundane duff and stuff of life,
and wouldn’t you know…
every single one has ended up being exactly what I’m looking for.

A Time Less Bold

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Would you believe I’ve been looking
for rain, here, with few days remaining
in this fleeting season of summer?
Our days are numbered that we might
share with the sun in a clear blue sky
and the hours growing warmer,
and I have kept an eye out for the clouds.
Only I wish for the conditions and doubt
that might send us all deep inside
our dark homes to sleep and read and pray
in preparation for the coming colder days.
Would you believe that the sight
of slate gray spanning horizon to zenith
and down is one I am quite taken with?
~David K. Wheeler “The Cold Season” from Contingency Plans

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can’t confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.
~Philip Larkin “Mother, Summer, I”

Summer grass aches and whispers.

It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours
       out wishes to the overhead stars.

The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow 
        coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.
~Carl Sandberg “Summer Grass”

August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
– Elizabeth Maua Taylor “August”

The endless clear skies of August
now broken with exuberant clouds,
rain falling in warm gusts,
leaves landing on browned ground.

This summer ended up being simply too much –
an excess of everything bright and beautiful,
meant to make us joyful,
yet bold and exhausting in its riches.

From endless hours of daylight,
to high rising temperatures and wildfires,
to palettes of smoke-filled landscapes
to fruitfulness and abundant blooms.

While summer always fills a void
after enduring cold spare dark days
the rest of the year,
I still depend on autumn returning.

I welcome darkening times back,
knowing how much I miss
those drear twilight months of longing
for the overwhelming fullness of summer.

Waking with the Light

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Light wakes us – there’s the sun
climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley,
finding our faces.
It is July,
between the hay and harvest,
a time at arm’s length from all other time,
the roads ragged with meadowsweet and mallow,
with splays of seedheads, slubbed and coarse, rough linen.
The fields above the house, clotted with sheep all spring,
are empty now and froth with flowering grasses,
still in the morning light. Birds move around
the leafy fields, the leafy garden.

It is the time
to set aside all vigil, good or ill,
to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention
as dandelions let seedlings to the wind.
Wake with the light.
Get up and go about the day and watch
its surfaces that brighten with the sun.

And later, when the light is drowsed and heavy
go find the burdened fruit trees where the shade
lies splashed and opened-out across the ground.
Spread over it a quilt worn soft by other bodies,
then curl and fall down into sleep at light.

Awaken to a world of long, loose grass-stems,
and leaves above,
and birds, breaking out of the leaves.
~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”

Saying good-bye to July last week
meant admitting summer is already half-baked
and so are we–

we who are still doughy,
not nearly done enough.

The rush to autumn is breathless.
We want to hold on tight
to our longish days,
fall asleep in the grasses,
endure sweaty nights
for just a little while longer…

Please, oh please
grant us unending light
and steady us for the task
of getting ready for letting go.

A new series of summer photo notecards from our farm is now available as a thank you gift to you for your financial support of Barnstorming — details here

As Ancient Roots Run Deep

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The wise old apple tree in spring,
Though split and hollow, makes a crown
Of such fantastic blossoming
We cannot let them cut it down.
It bears no fruit, but honey bees
Prefer it to other trees.

The orchard man chalks his mark
And says, “This empty shell must go.”
We nod and rub it off the bark
As soon as he goes down the row.
Each spring he looks bewildered. “Queer,
I thought I marked this thing las year.”

Ten orchard men have come and gone
Since first I saw my grandfather
Slyly erase it. I’m the one
To do it now. As I defer
The showy veteran’s removal
My grandson nods his approval.

Like mine, my fellow ancient’s roots
Are deep in the last century
From which our memories send shoots
For all our grandchildren to see
How spring, inviting bloom and rhyme,
Defeats the orchard men of time.
~Robert Hillyer “The Pastoral”

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~ Maya Angelou “When Great Trees Fall”

When our ancient Spitzenberg apple tree came down in a November windstorm years ago, there was no time to provide any sort of memorial service, or otherwise dispose of the remains.

My husband started in on the job Thanksgiving morning and I watched through the kitchen window as I cooked for the family members soon to arrive. As he made several chain saw cuts through the trunk to make pieces easily moveable, the extent of the astonishing hole in this old tree became visible. It was suffering from an extreme equivalent of human osteoporosis with a brittle skeleton that somehow had lasted through innumerable windstorms over the years, even while still bearing apples, still trying its best to be fruitful.

The brittleness extended right down into the roots, and they too gave way so easily in the wind that the tree literally broke off at ground level and leaned over, propped up by much healthier and resilient upper branches that had so recently held apples.

When it fell, the trunk oriented itself so it provided a view right through to the barnyard down the hill, telescoping what the tree had surveyed for so many years of its life. Clearly this had been a holey trunk for some years; within the cavity at the base were piles of different size rocks stashed there by the Lawrence children three generations ago, followed by our Gibson children thirty years ago.

There was also a large tarnished spoon, lost decades ago into the dark center of the apple tree and now retrieved at its death. At some point, a Gibson child playing a farm version of frisbee golf must have flung a plastic bucket lid at the hole in the tree, and it disappeared into the gap and settled at the bottom.

All this, like a treasure trove of history, was just waiting for the time when the tree would give up its secrets at its death. There were no gold or silver coins, no notes to the future like a glass bottle put out to sea. This well hidden time capsule held simply rocks and spoon and lid.

I realized as I stared into the gulf of empty trunk that I’m hollowing too, more hollow than I care to admit. Like so many of us, stuff is hidden deep inside that we’d just as soon not have discovered. Our outside scaffolding braces against the buffeting by the winds and storms of life, as we cling with mighty roots to this mortal soil.

It is clear we’d be much stronger if we were wholly solid throughout, filled with something stronger even than our outsides. Yet we tend to get filled up with a lot of nothing, or even worse than nothing, a lot of garbage. This is stuff that weakens us, furthers the rot, shortens our fruitful life, doing nothing to make us more whole and holy.

I’m looking more critically now at what fills my empty spots since staring down the barrel of that old apple tree trunk.

Even so, I realize my hollow shell has been saved and salvaged, year after year, by the grace and wisdom of our Divine Orchardist who loves us as we are, up to and after we finally topple over.

May our hollow be hallowed.
Wholly hole-y holy…

Anointed by Blossoms

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Resurrection of the little apple tree outside
my window, leaf-
light of late
in the April
called her eyes, forget
forget—
but how
How does one go
about dying?
Who on earth
is going to teach me—
The world
is filled with people
who have never died
~Franz Wright “On Earth” from Walking to Martha’s Vineyard

The year Dylan’s mother died
I picked sprays of apple blossom,
wound its pink, off-white shades
in raffia for you to take to him.

Every year it’s out I think of us,
the children, how apples bring
the tree so low, until they thud
to the lawn, drumming the end 

of summer. The blossom was heavy 
when Dylan’s mother was dying – 
old wood doing its best again –
and he, like you, was so young.
~Jackie Wills “Apple Blossom”

Is there anything in Spring so fair
As apple blossoms falling through the air?

When from a hill there comes a sudden breeze
That blows freshly through all the orchard trees.

The petals drop in clouds of pink and white,
Noiseless like snow and shining in the light.

Making beautiful an old stone wall,
Scattering a rich fragrance as they fall.

There is nothing I know of to compare
With apple blossoms falling through the air.
~Henry Adams Parker “Apple Blossoms”

Jesus,
Apple of God’s eye,
dangling solitaire
on leafless tree,
bursting red.

As he drops
New Eden dawns
and once again
we Adams choose:
God’s first fruit
or death.
~Christine F. Nordquist “Eden Inversed”

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 
1 Corinthians 15:20-23

The rain eased enough
to allow blades of grass to stand back up
refreshed, yet unsuspecting,
primed for the mower’s next cutting swath.

Clusters of pink tinged blossoms
sway in response to my mower’s pass.
Apple buds bulge on snagging branches,
showering me from their hidden raindrop reservoirs
collected within each blushing petal cup.

My face anointed by perfumed apple tears
when I tend to forget – forget–
this first fruit is offered, not forbidden,
hanging from the tree, broken
so our hearts will drop too, bursting open red
with Him.

Challenging the Dull and the Dead

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…every year
the dull and dead in us
meets our Easter challenge:

to be open to the unexpected,
to believe beyond our security,
to welcome God in every form,
and trust in our own greening.
~Joyce Rupp from Out of the Ordinary: Prayers, Poems, and Reflections for Every Season

The challenge after each Easter
is to go back to my everyday routine
as if nothing momentous has happened
when, in fact, everything has happened.

There is laundry to do
floors to mop
groceries to buy
a barn to clean
taxes to pay.

Nothing seemingly has changed –
yet…
everything is changed.

Now I know why,
though dull and dead and pruned,
after each and every Sabbath, I sprout green ~
I am alive only
because He is.

Bring to Light the Mystery: Every Broken Limb Lit

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My sorrow’s flower was so small a joy
It took a winter seeing to see it as such.
Numb, unsteady, stunned at all the evidence
Of winter’s blind imperative to destroy,
I looked up, and saw the bare abundance
Of a tree whose every limb was lit and fraught with
snow.
What I was seeing then I did not quite know
But knew that one mite more would have been too much.
~Christian Wiman “After a Storm” from Once in the West: Poems

A branch strains mightily to bear
a summer’s bounty of fruit without breaking.

It sustains the load, but may drop some fruit early:
the loss is meant to preserve the tree.

Then comes winter wind and ice storms
when one more snowflake may become the mite too much.

What painful pruning is endured.
Even the strongest branches may break,
or the tree itself toppled.

At what cost do we endure the broken limbs of war?

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 
John 15: 1-2

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Lyrics:
White the sheep that gave the wool
Green the pastures where they fed
Blue and scarlet side by side
Bless the warp and bless the thread

May the charm of lasting life
Be upon your flocks in full
From the hill where they rest
May they rise both whole and well

Bless the man who wears this cloth
May he wounded never be
From the bitter cold and frost
May this cloth protection be

Bless the children warmed within
Three times three our love enfold
Peace and plenty may they find
May they grow both wise and bold

Now is waulked the web we’ve spun
Winter storms may rage in vain
Bless the work by which we won
Comfort from the wind and rain

White the sheep that gave the wool
Green the pastures where they fed
Blue and scarlet side by side
Bless the warp and bless the thread

How We Heal

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Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.
~ Linda Hogan from Solar Storms

Wet stones from the middle path.
A shard of green heartwood
ripped by the big storm
from the oak’s broken, heavy limb.

And we all have scar stories.

Which say more than wound stories.
Wound stories tell how we were injured.
Scar stories tell how we heal.
~Liza Hyatt,”What I Carry Home With Me” from Wayfaring

between the rosebuds
and the thorns
the pine tree branches
with their needles
and kitty claws

my hands are
always bleeding

and turning up
scars that cry, “I’m alive,
I feel it. I feel it all”
and then falling
back into whispers
while my body
heals itself
one more time
~Juniper Klatt, I was raised in a house of water

…see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before.

There’s a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh, as all flesh is proud of its wounds,
wears them as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest –

And when two people have loved each other,
see how it is like a scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
~Jane Hirshfield from  “For What Binds Us”

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
~Andrew Wyeth, artist

photo by Nate Gibson

In winter, we are stripped naked as the bare trees right now; our skin and bones reveal the scars, broken branches, and healed fractures of previous winter windstorms. We no longer have anything to hide behind or among, as our defects are plain to see.  

Our whole story is a mystery untold, impossible to conceal.

Scars come in various sizes and shapes, some hidden, some quite obvious to all. How they are inflicted also varies–some accidental, others therapeutic, and too many intentional. 

The most insidious are the ones so internal, no one can see or know they are there. Sometimes we aren’t aware of them ourselves – only something unreachable is still hurting at times.

Most often, they are simply the scars of living in a hazardous world – on farm animals, healing into a tough scar of leathery “proud flesh”.

Yet, none of them are as deep and wide as scars accepted on our behalf, nor as wondrous as the Love that oozed from them, nor as amazing as the Grace that abounds to this day because of the promise they represent. These are scars from the Word made Flesh, a proud flesh that won’t give way, lasting forever.

Though I am abundantly flawed with pocks and scars, I am reminded each winter of my renewal. There are hints of new growth to come when the frost abates and the sap thaws.  

Indeed, I am prepared to wait an eternity, if necessary, to understand the rest of the story.