Finally, we couldn’t stand it any longer and we rapped on the door.
“Could we please pick some of your apricots?” we begged. “They are falling off the trees and we can’t stand seeing them go to waste.”
The lady of the house looked at us as if we were something from outer space. But two middleaged women didn’t look too threatening, I guess, and she nodded her okay.
Wow! …a whole tree of apricots that were just dripping with juice. For two hours we picked. Our sandals were ruined and our arms, up to our elbows covered with nectar. Exhausted, we climbed down from the ladders and looked over the feast before us … how could we resist? We reached out and ate one.
A tiny voice from a nearby balcony admonished us, “If you eat them, you’ll die!” The young observer knew they were probably covered with insect spray, or whatever they use on fruit trees, and had obviously been threatened by her mother in that well-known way mothers have of scaring the living daylights out of you.
We did not die! But we were left with the memory of apricot juice leaking down our chins as we ate that delicious fruit.
While camping one year in the Okanagan, the campground caretaker caught us picking Saskatoon berries. She had never seen anyone pick Saskatoons for eating, they were just there for the birds. She was surprised to learn that an Alberta freezer would be half empty without packages of Saskatoon berries.
We camped there every year. The campsite had been an orchard at one time and the caretaker insisted that we eat all the fruit we wanted as it attracted bees that sometimes stung children enjoying the campsite. We came back every summer to have our yearly fill of fruit right off the trees. Now that is real living!
A friend from Alberta recently retired to this sunny destination and we visited her one day. She was sitting crying under her peach tree.
“What is wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve canned and canned and I just can’t can anymore.”
Raised in the hungry 30’s she had never wasted a thing. A year or two later she relaxed somewhat and let the birds eat up what she couldn’t give away.
Sometimes God’s abundance does overwhelm us. And sometimes it takes an Albertan to really appreciate that marvelous harvest of fruit they have in areas of British Columbia.
