Apples – Cynthia Reyes

Interior designer Valerie Rowley and her husband Chris took a big risk in 1993 when they bought their future home. For one thing, the countryside house north of Toronto was quite run-down.

“We immediately saw the potential but we hadn’t sold our existing house and it was during the recession. So did we play it safe and wait? Nah! We bought it and just fervently hoped our other one sold (we were up against another bidder so really had no choice).”

The other house sold, in the nick of time.

Looking at the house today, you wouldn’t know all the work Val and Chris took on. “We virtually rebuilt the interior of this home. And made the garden almost from scratch – unless you count the few scrubby six-foot cedars that we inherited. It took many years which is why we feel we have so much of ourselves invested in it.” Val’s favourite interior spaces are the kitchen and sunroom. “The sunroom is full of light all year round. It’s also where I raise my vegetable and flower seedlings, grow watercress, herbs and salads through the winter, take cuttings of summer geraniums. To have this area full of pink, salmon and red blooms through the snow season makes the monochrome of winter bearable.” Favourite outdoor spaces?
The garden is an important part of “home” for Val and Chris. “Luckily, Chris enjoys physical work a lot more than I do, so it’s a good partnership. I grow things and prune and he digs holes and chops down branches. And we have a young weeding lady who is also a budding opera singer!” In late summer and early fall, there’s the harvest.
It takes work. But as you can see from Chris’ smile, it’s work they love doing. They plan to keep doing it for as long as possible.

Many people today are drawn to houses that look like they belong in a glossy interior design magazine. Valerie, an interior designer, and her husband Chris, a TV producer, didn’t do that. They bought a run-down place and worked hard at it for 20 years. Today, for this couple, this place is — quite simply — home.

“I guess because everywhere I look, what I see is immensely satisfying to me,” says Valerie. “The flowers (growing, not cut) that I always have everywhere, the artifacts that Chris and I have accumulated from numerous foreign countries over the years, the carefully chosen furnishings and the general knowledge that we have constructed a home that is very personal and comforting to the two of us. It all works.”

“We have no intention of leaving,” says Val, “ until we physically can’t handle the work it entails – and it does entail work!”

“It’s about staying as healthy as one can as one ages,” says Val. “I think it’s important for everyone to realize life doesn’t have to stop when the wrinkles and aches and pains start. “

Bravo, Val and Chris. You’re an inspiration.

Photos by Hamlin Grange

Way out of reach is where the biggest, sweetest fruit always grow. The sweetest guava hangs way out over the middle of a deep pond. The perfect apples are at the top of the tree.

And far below them you stand, wishing you had wings.

That’s what I’m thinking as I gaze up at a bunch of apples near the top of our big old apple tree. A heritage variety, Wolf River, this tree and the one next to it are well over a hundred years old, taller than our two-storey farmhouse, and still going strong. When ripe, the apples are as big as grapefruit, fragrant, with an unusual spicy-sweet-tart taste. Perfect for pies.

Last year, there were hundreds of ripening apples to choose from: enough for birds, squirrels and humans to peacefully share.

But these trees only bear heavily every other year. Since this is their “off year”, it’s a race against the wildlife to get at the fruit first.

If we’re lucky, the wind blows some off the trees in early October. These windfall apples aren’t ripe, but make delicious filling for crepes. Just cut off the bruised parts, slice up the rest and drop it into a hot pot, along with brown sugar, cinnamon and butter. But the very best and biggest apples are those that ripen on the tree. Just two of them could make one pie.

“I’ll use the tall ladder to get them all in a week or so”, my husband says.

“It won’t be tall enough,” I reply.

“Don’t worry,” says my brave guy. “I’ll use the tall ladder, AND a long stick.”

Several days later, I go outside and look straight up at the treetop. The apples are still there, but something doesn’t look right, somehow. It’s like there’s a big dark bundle right above a bunch of apples.

“You should go take a look,” I tell my husband when I come back inside the house.

He goes outside. He comes back and says: “That’s the biggest squirrel nest I’ve ever seen.”

It figures. If you’re a squirrel who likes apples, it makes perfect sense to build your home right at the source of your food.

Squirrels have to eat, after all. But …

“You little creeps!” I hear myself yelling up at the nest.

On the Internet, I learn that squirrels are notorious criminals. They steal pears, peaches and apples. They build their nests right in the trees and get to the fruit before the humans can. This makes fruit tree owners so furious, some have become criminals themselves – moving from trapping to illegally shooting the squirrels. It’s war out there.

Meanwhile, our apples have stopped falling. The remaining ones get bigger and riper every day. I can’t understand why the squirrels haven’t got them yet.

Or my husband, for that matter. There’s no sign of a ladder or stick, or a husband getting ready to pick apples.

But — what if the squirrels have been watching the apples just like we have? Just biding their time? What if they gang up on my poor husband when he’s tottering on a tall ladder, aiming a long stick at the apples right below their nest?

“Let’s just pick the ones you can reach with the stick,” I say one early evening.

Surprisingly, he’s able to pick most of the apples, except for the ones nearest to the squirrel nest. He looks up into the tree, eyeing that bunch wistfully.

“They’re perfect apples,” he says, shaking his head. “Just perfect. Pity…”

We decide to leave them to the squirrels and be thankful for the ones we already have. I’m packing the apples into a basket, when I hear, “What the hell…!”

And an instant after that: “There’s a raccoon up there,” he says, pointing, voice raised. “An enormous raccoon.”

He’s right. It is huge. A grey-black thing, all fur and eyes and tail, looking remarkably comfortable, almost curled around a tree branch. Seems there’s more than squirrels eyeing those apples.