An Apple Conundrum

 Dateline: Cattaraugus County, western New York state

The jungle never ceases to amaze. This year a tree that never produced anything before suddenly exploded. These may not look the most beautiful apples in the world but given the right treatment and a slosh of cream - well wow! 

The others are doing their best too, if we can get to them before the deer do. And once picked and spread out on the wooden benches on the porch, they're not safe either. Not content with hogging the tomatoes,  nibbling a bit and leaving the rest, the chipmunks - they're the usual suspects for good reason - seem to be doing the same with the apples.

Of course they're not interested in the tree outside the front door. We wring our hands over it every year. Every autumn it outdoes all the other others. The apples are bigger, shinier, more beautiful.

And they lie prettily on the grass like a jewelled carpet.

The catch is that they taste horrible. Woody and bitter, their flavour doesn't have a single redeeming feature. Every autumn we resign ourselves to trying to rake them up and every autumn there are more and more of them. Especially this year after we cut back the tree. You can't win. Then we had an idea. We remembered some friends up the hill who might make good use of them. So we scooped some of them up (yes, that's just some of them.)

And hauled them off to Flanigan Farm where some happy customers couldn't wait to get at them.

The county resounded with ecstatic munching, crunching and grunting. Pity we never thought of that before!