Dear Miss Blue,

Yes, the Queen Anne Apple tree stood right at the far end of our father's garden. It bore the best of apples - red and juicy - and we were allowed to eat the ones fallen to the ground. The tree was not very tall but we did prop a small ladder against the trunk so that we could pick the apples from the taller branches. We took turns standing on the ladder, reaching as far as our arms would reach without losing our balance and kissing each rosy cheek apple tenderly before sending it off into the late summer air to the basket below.

And so we picked and ran in and out of our house with our baskets of apples while out mother washed and peeled apples. She said she was putting up applesauce and apple butter. The kitchen was all over with pots on the stove, vinegar bubbling crazily with chunks of white pulp glistening as they bounced up and down in the pot. Our mother was busy poking, then straining apples into another pot, adding brown sugar and spices, until finally it was all done and the jars were lined up on the table for filling.

The apple tree was mostly bare, leaving a few scattered throughout the branches almost hidden from our sight. The birds would find them, we knew. The jars of apple butter and apple sauce would go with us from Gagetown to Detroit. That's what our mother said. Other times we had climbed the apple tree and sat on its small spread-out friendly branches while we telephoned with tin cans our messages to whoever was on the ground - cats, dogs, birds, one another. All in a summer in Gagetown.

Stories from Pearl