I'm not a particularly emotional person.
I don't typically well up at weddings, or around babies, or under crisis.
But some moments undo the best of us.
I have a very long standing dear friend, Sue (sometimes found over here) who I met when I was fifteen and we've been friends ever since, notwithstanding varying continental distances.
On Monday, having been in Sydney all day, we came home to a long package on the front doorstep. In that long box lay two apple trees, top and tailed, with root balls moistly sealed, ready to be planted.
Sometimes it's your oldest friends, even if they're in London, who know just the right moment to send the perfect present.
Adam and I stood the trees up on the dining table after we bundled sleeping children out of the car and into bed, and stared at them. How did she know?
How did she know that putting a tree in the ground here on this old, old family farm, right now, was exactly what we needed this week?
Apples, even. Our first fruit trees. In what will be the orchard.
Right when we're floundering just a little bit, unsure if we can sustain the luxury of farming full time; will our eggs sales, chicken sales, pork sales, biscuit sales uphold us?
And then today after dinner I was watching my two girls in the bath; Tilly was squeezing out the stocking with oats in it to calm her eczema, Ivy was singing in Ivy language, Henry was quietly achieving something extraordinary on his ipod while waiting for his shower - I am amazed at the coding he's figured out already, he's still seven - and I welled up with happy tears. Adam had put on his favourite piece of music, Pachelbel's Canon, and was conducting in the hallway.
There'd been a funeral on Friday for a local lady, not someone I knew, but someone that was a dear friend to friends of ours. Adam had been with the fire brigade at the accident. We reminded each other, just at dinner, how short life might be.
Grab it.
Don't miss it.
Put a tree in the ground.
Hold your nerve.
Find a new market, idea, income stream, and one day we'll have apple pie and preserves and sauce to go with the pork loin chops.
Really, she'll be apples.
Thank you Sue, we love them. And you.
xxx
