Apple Gathering

My family received a bumper crop of fruit on their trees this year, and a few times this week we have gone out into the back yard in order to pick apples off of the trees (and also off of the ground). Lucy has loved gathering the apples and putting them into bushel baskets, and she particularly has liked sorting the "yucky" ones from the good ones.

I do think that this experience has affected (and perhaps tainted?) her thoughts about apples and picking apples. Tonight, my brother A pointed to a picture on our dining room wall, The Apple Gatherers (1880) by Frederick Morgan, and asked Lucy, "What are they doing?"

Lucy replied, "Picking apples...yuck!"

We all chuckled at the thought that she now things picking apples consists of yucky fruit, and even more that the S family's trees make (solely?) yucky fruit. Oh dear! Ha ha! Some of the apples are tart or have worms, but some of the fruit is quite good.

This painting by Frederick Morgan has been in our dining room for years and years, and it is something that I associated with my family's home (as well as my mom's aesthetic preferences). However, it just occurred to me this week that the painting is on the same wall that faces the fruit trees in the yard, which makes me wonder if my mom thought about the subject matter and the physical alignment with our miniature orchard when she placed the painting on the wall.

Ironically, this painting portrays a romanticized view of orchard workers gathering a bountiful harvest, but my two-year-old isn't old enough to think about the romanticized effort or the suggestions of fertility and bounty by having (mostly) women collect the fruit! Maybe one day she'll think more than "yuck" when she sees this painting.