Episodes in the Childrens Garden - 2010/12/31

Windfall Apples
Keaton would look to see if I was watching, then, at full toddle, head for a windfall apple. At just over a year old, he desperately wanted to eat apples like his older siblings.

On many a day this past fall, I saw my kids chomping on windfall apples. As anyone with an apple tree knows, trees naturally shed some apples before they are ripe, so—undeterred by unripe apples—my kids had a couple of months of good eating from windfall apples. Not being a clean freak, I’m delighted to see the kids enjoy fruit fresh from the tree, even if I suspect that they’re getting the odd worm.

The problem is that experience hasn’t yet taught Keaton which apples are already half eaten by squirrels or raccoons—and which apples are rotten. It made for a bit of a game of cat and mouse between Keaton and me, as I tried to get to apples to vet them before he put them in his mouth. The day I failed most miserable at our game was the day he fished a fully brown and rotting apple out from underneath a bush and took a whopping bite before I could pull it from his hands. Yuck.

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