Apple season. The air is sugared with the sweet scent of fruit warmed by the September sun.
Driving down country lanes, my eye is drawn almost constantly to the bright red orbs of apple trees. They grow wildly and randomly; in the middle of an empty field in the deep dusk of a late summer twilight. Up on the hillside, clinging close to the walls of earth. Remnants of forgotten orchards clustered in copses of alder and hemlock trees.
I see plenty of well-maintained apple trees, too, in the yards and orchards around town. Groomed and trimmed and domesticated so that they yield up their apples easily and tidily.
But I like those wild old forgotten ones the best.
