Iris Underwood: Honest Living: Apple season

Last Tuesday I took me to my dermatologist to examine a spot on my nose, exposed to the sun while gardening. 

As his office is located near Yates Cider Mill, I found myself in traffic congested with apple cider and donut lovers.

Ah, a flashback of my boyfriend driving us north from my home in Warren into the country put a smile on my face. A friend and her boyfriend joined us for a double date.

Yes! There turned, turned the huge water mill! And families walked the trail I once walked with my friends. 

Grateful for memory, I realized 60 years had passed since that gorgeous fall day when the guys climbed an apple tree and hid from my friend and me.

We found them by their odd birdcalls.

All memories rooted in Yates Cider Mill throughout my years as a student of Lincoln High School, Nine Mile and Federal in Warren.

Fifty-nine years ago.

I hungered for a donut and cider, yet dared not turn off the road, for not one parking spot sat vacant.

On my drive north, I recalled memories of my mother’s most delicious apple pies and crisps.

Growing up on her family’s farm in Appalachia, Sadie McCoy learned to bake and cook as a girl. The eldest child, she mastered pie dough and filling by age 11 when her mother assigned her the cookstove to prepare their family dinner.

And with their apple orchard, everything she needed stood within her reach. 

Although my cider mill date that autumnal day in 1967 passed away Aug. 27, 2021, memory of his kindness and mercy throughout my parents’ divorce that year revives each apple season.

Furthermore, although the apple tree my late husband and I planted together over two decades ago did not bear fruit this fall (neither did its companions the peach and pear trees), I cling to hope.

Thus, I take note of my neglect to better spray the trees for disease and to protect the blossoms from frost.

In this apple season, I share with you one of my favorite entries from Richardson Wright’s book, “The Gardener’s Bed-Book,” titled “Harvest,” dated Oct. 25 (published 1929).

“Among the serenities that no money or honor or acclaim can ever bring is one that defies the worries of the world. It is to sit in front of your own fireplace of an Autumn night and, before going up to bed, to eat apples from trees that you have planted with your own hands, you yourself have pruned and sprayed, you yourself watched grow from mere sticks to fruitful abundance. And if a wife be by your side (and not talking too much) and a dog at your side (a dog not too intent on fleas!) you may dismiss all else with the ease and inconsequential gesture with which you fling the cores into the embers.”

Dear Reader, two cats beside me well fulfill the need for a dog (and mouser). And I must be satisfied with flinging an apple core into an occasional bonfire. 

Presently, I’m tossing the proverbial coin whether to bake an apple pie or crisp. Both are delicious with Yule Love It Lavender Lemon Honey ice cream.