Making Connections and Applesauce

Making Connections and Applesauce

We live in the suburbs of Seattle and our neighborhood is full of regular hard working folk busy with life and not much time set aside for much else. Aside from our immediate neighbors regular communication with the rest of our neighbors is not a very common activity.

Tonight while on a walk with the kids we stopped at the home of one of our unfamiliar neighbors, previously we have only exchanged waves at a distance and usually through the windshield as he drove by our house. We stopped to see if he would let us pick some apples from the tree in his front yard. Heavy laden with some beautiful yellow apples it was just begging for us to stop!

Alan gladly gave us permission to pick some apples and invited us to come back in the spring to pick cherries from the tree in his backyard.  It was apparent that these apples would most likely not all get picked and many would go to waste we were more than happy to make good use of them.   In turn, I offered my services to prune this tree for him as well we would also bring him some applesauce. He was happy to share the excess of apples from his yard and the history of the tree. This Yellow Delicious apple was planted in 1987 when his second daughter was born. She has now moved out of the home but this tree remains and stands as a reminder of precious time in his family’s past.

As we left his house with the wagon full of apples and visions of applesauce and pies, I couldn’t help looking into all of our other neighbor’s front and backyards to see if we could find some pears!

Take some time to reach out to your neighbors and get to know them. In this changing world and apparent difficult times ahead it is important that those connections be made and relationships developed.