Apples for all

Every year, around this time, our house smells like apples.

When we bought this place, we discovered the previous owners had planted a modest orchard just down the hill. A couple apple trees, some cherries and pears. The apple trees produce more than the others do; right now there are probably about a hundred fifty apples in various containers all around the kitchen.

Felicia slices them up and bakes cinnamon apple chips, or carves them and feeds them into a juicer to make juice. The apple scent gets more and more powerful.

Before moving here, I'd never lived in a place with a real producing garden or fruit trees. It's really nice. I don't mind so much when the house smells like apples. I like to think about how Squish will remember this someday. Every year we picked apples and made things from them. I like that she'll have simple, pleasant memories like these.