Poofball

How to tell when your apples are ripe (Googling).

Can’t tell by color.

The apples farthest out on the tree ripen soonest.

Lift one sideways; if it snaps right off, it’s ripe.

So that’s what I waited all day to try.

We had a major downpour for the last day of summer. I have to show you, just because I’ve never seen one poof out quite so much: this one house finch finally shook herself off and went for a dry perch. The birdseed was all over at the feeder she’d just left, but it was somewhat exposed and enough already with this wind and the randomness of water falling out of the sky–since when does it do that? (I wondered if she’d hatched this spring.)

By evening the storm had blown over and I went outside with scissors and a bowl to hold stuff.

I snipped open the tape on the clamshell that held the biggest two apples and a few leaves and one small one in there too, photo above. I carefully, carefully opened it and found to my surprise that there were actually the two big ones and three, count’em three little ones crammed inside. I did thin those, I’m sure, I think there were four each side originally, but there you go.

I lifted the nearest big one to the left and it came right off in my hand. Into the bowl, done.

I lifted its mate to the right. Nuh uh, nothin’ doin’, ain’t lettin’ go.

Oh okay, so, I put the clamshell back on, grabbed the shipping tape out of the bowl next to the apple and sealed the thing back up again. Sorry raccoons, these are still mine.

And I would tell you how the first ripe critter-free Fuji after 21 years’ anticipation finally tastes, except… I waited for the others so I could share the grand moment with them too.

Michelle got home at about ten o’clock. It’s bag night. (Every third night I can’t eat past dinnertime so that I can change the dressing in the morning. It’s a Crohn’s thing.)

The apple. It awaits.