New England Apple Picking

I’ve decided I’m going to work my way back in time here to tell you all about September. It was a crazy month, with a final week that’s going to cap it all off. I’ll try to do some good real time documentation of this week, but there’s a significant chance I’m going to end up losing my mind and Andrew is going to wind up finding me in a heap in the corner covered in icing. That’s right, this week is wedding cake week.

But first, let me tell you what I did a couple of weekends ago.

I went back home for the wedding of my oldest friend, Andrea. I’ve known her since I was three. I used to sleep over her house and she would make me do exercises before going to bed. We would do jigsaw puzzles and play Duck Hunt on Nintendo with the gun up against the TV screen. We went to different high schools and used to compete against each other at track meets but always cheered for each other during our respective events – Andrea was a 2-miler, I was a pole vaulter. I visited her in college and she came down to Baltimore when I first moved here. Let’s just say we have a history.

Since we were back in New England for the weekend and the weather was not 105 degrees, I forced The Jackster and Andrew to take me apple picking. I think I may have mentioned before my love of apple picking and its quintessential New England-ness for me. So we headed up to New Hampshire to pick us some apples. And unlike last time, there were still actually apples to pick! This year was mostly Macintosh and Cortland apples, but we managed to fill our bag (with 53 apples. Yes, I counted them all).

And because we are nothing, if not devoted apple pickers, only the best apples were worth our efforts. You can’t see it in the above pictures, but Andrew is holding me up cheerleader style so that I could reach that apple 12 feet up in the tree. If that’s not teamwork I don’t know what is. Balance, trust, and strength had to come together in perfect harmony to reach the apex of apple picking. (Too much? I told you we were serious apple pickers.)

That’s pride right there.

I must say, that apple was quite delicious.

 After an afternoon of apple picking, apple cider, cider donuts, and some fresh vegetables, Andrew and I headed back to the airport. Yes, with all of those apples. Actually, we left about 20 of them with The Jackster, but we still hauled a 10 lb bag of apples onto the airplane. Surprisingly, no one really batted an eye aside from the lady sitting next to us as we pulled the tote bag full of apples out from under the seat. Maybe she was just really hungry.