Garden Muse Day: September Apples

The Apple Orchard

Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us

old memories? To find releases and seek

new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,

mingled with darkness coming from within,

as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud

wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees

reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches

which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,

wait patiently, trying to outlast, to

serve another season's hundred days of toil,

straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking

but succeeding, even though the burden

should at times seem almost past endurance.

Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

Thus must it be, when willingly you strive

throughout a long and uncomplaining life,

committed to one goal: to give yourself!

And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Garden Muse Day is brought to you on the first of each month by Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago. (I'm a little early, but I wanted to post this before Labor Day.)

I had an entirely different poem planned for today, but when I searched for it on a poem site, I found this one instead. Not as full of the images of ripened apples and the coming fall, this poem instead has a wonderful message, I think.

I have two apple trees--not an orchard--which seem to produce an abundance of apples every other year. This year conditions must have been just right, because the branches seem to groan under the weight of all the fruit. I have been waiting to make sure they were completely ripe, but quite a few have already fallen from the tree and have been mashed into unwilling compost by the lawn mower. This week I will pick some, and if they are indeed ripe enough, I'll try to make use of them all. I'm not sure what variety they are--a Jonathan or something akin to it, I think, because they are better cooking apples than "eating" apples. I plan to make a lot of applesauce, but there will be enough for apple cake, apple bread, and my children's favorite--old-fashioned apple crisp. Ymmmm....the smell of cinnamon is already in the air!

More apples . . . but of course these won't be made into applesauce! The flowering crabapple trees have been full of fruit for several weeks. Years ago, my mother used to pick crabapples from a relative's trees and make crabapple jelly. Those crabapples were much bigger than these, but I still can't help but think how much work was put into each jar of that jelly. These fruits instead will provide a banquet for the birds who have already been enjoying the feast.


"A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity."
---Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds."

--Abraham Lincoln

Have a happy and safe Labor Day!