Raymond in the Garden
Mr. Brown was showing his son Raymond how to pick apricots on their new farm near Parachute, Colorado. He picked the apricots and placed them down inside the 'picking sack' as he carefully selected the best fruit from his orchards to be sold in Denver.
"Okay, I've got enough in here. Now, I go over here to the bushel basket and set my bag down inside of it. Okay?" he questioned
"I'm with you so far, Dad," assured Raymond.
"Then, I just lift on these two little pieces of rope, and see what happens?" Mr. Brown questioned once again.
Raymond noticed that when his father lifted the two little pieces of rope that the load of fruit he'd just picked, emptied into the basket over which Mr. Brown was resting his picking sack.
"Wow, can I try that?" Raymond asked enthusiastically.
"I thought you'd never ask," smiled Raymond's father.
Raymond's dad reached behind the seat of their truck and pulled out a picking sack for Raymond. And in no time Raymond got quite proficient at picking apricots and emptying his picking sack into a bushel basket. A couple hours after they began, however Raymond's stomach started feeling like breakfast had been a couple days ago.
"When can we go eat, Dad?" he asked. I'm hungry."
"We're almost done here Ray. Let's try to finish this section of the orchard," urged Ray's dad. "If you'd like, you can eat a couple apricots. That will help fill you up until we get back to the house for lunch.
"Umm...these are delicious," slurped Raymond as he smacked his lips.
"Now Raymond, anytime you're out here and you want an apricot, you just go ahead and eat it," smiled Mr. Brown.
"How many apricot trees do we have, Dad?"
"We've got about a hundred trees, Son."
"And, what other kinds of fruit are we going to have?"
"Well, we've got about a dozen plum trees. And there's three different varieties of those. Those will be the next fruit to turn ripe. And then we've got about twenty peach trees that will produce their fruit after that. Then you might find a few grapes on those vines down by the cherry trees alongside the hen house. And after that, there's about twenty apple trees down in the bottom orchard. And after that it will be winter and there will be three feet of snow out in these orchards.
"So Dad, when do we pick the cherries?" questioned Raymond.
"Sorry, son. But the cherry harvest froze out this year," replied Raymond's dad.
"Well, are those the only cherry trees that we have?" asked Raymond.
"No, Son. We have a couple trees up there, and a couple trees down there, and two more trees way down there."
"So Dad, you don't mind me eating all the apricots I want. What about the rest of the fruit?" questioned Raymond.
"No Son, you can eat all you want. But just be sensible." cautioned Mr. Brown.
"Oh, of course. I'll be careful," assured Raymond.
"Oh, wait a minute. There's one kind of cherry tree down in the lower orchard that I don't want you to eat," remembered Raymond's father.
"Oh, and why is that?" asked Raymond.
"Because they're pie cherry trees. And we just save those to make pies," answered Raymond's father.
So, the rest of the summer Raymond helped his father pick fruit. And, while Ray did so, he sampled the fruit. When he and his father weren't working Raymond liked to explore around their new farm. Sometimes he would get hungry, so he would pick some fruit to satisfy himself until lunch or until suppertime. Sometimes, however, Raymond ate so much that when lunch time came, he found that he wasn't hungry because he had already filled up on fruit.
Eventually, winter came, and just as his father had said, three feet of snow was resting in the orchards by January. Later, in the month of March, Mr. Brown taught Raymond how to prune the fruit trees so they would produce more the following summer.
It was a long hard winter, but then during the month of May the trees started budding. The first to bloom was the cherry tree. From atop the cedar strewn hill above their farm Raymond was able to look down upon a myriad of pink and white cherry blossoms. The family had to light fires under the cherry trees a couple mornings when the temperature dipped down into the low 30's, but finally the threat of frost was past and the cherry trees became laden with tiny green cherries.
And then when the month of July came, the green cherries started turning red. Some of the cherries turned a dark red, some of them turned a bright red, and some of the cherries turned a bright yellow orange.
And once again, when Raymond wasn't helping his father pick fruit, he was exploring the farm and sampling the fruit as he did so.
"Now, Raymond, remember what I told you about the two cherry trees down in the bottom orchard?" reminded his father one day when they were picking cherries.
"Oh, yes," he assured. "I haven't touched those cherries, Dad."
But to himself Raymond thought, "Boy, a cherry tree that makes pies! Wow! I bet those cherries are wonderful!" Raymond didn't want to admit it, but his curiosity was getting the best of him. "Why would Dad try to keep those cherries from me?" he asked himself. "Maybe it's because he wants them all for himself," he thought. He tried to brush this idea out of his mind, but instead, the thought lingered.
Finally, one day when his father was gone to the store for supplies Raymond found himself in the lower orchard. A strange compulsion seemed to tug at him to go closer to the two pie cherry trees. And then out of habit, he found himself tugging his form up into the top of the tree where his mother and his brother and sisters wouldn't be able to see him.
He looked all around him. The tree was just covered with pie cherries. Just then a stellar jay landed in the tree, but was soon chased off by a magpie.
"This is so cool to be up here where nobody knows where I am, not even the birds," he thought to himself.
Then Raymond's hand reached out and carefully plucked a cherry. He pulled it apart and looked at the seed. It looked safe to eat. Then without hesitation he plucked another and another and another until he had a whole hand full. He was about to take this hand full of cherries up in the cedar woods above their farm to sumptuously enjoy each tender little pie cherry, when he heard the voice of his eleven-year-old sister, Kaytlin.
"Raymond. Raymond, where are you?" she called as she walked straight towards his tree.
It seemed to Raymond that his only hope was to quickly stick the whole hand full of cherries into his mouth, chew them quickly, and spit the seeds out before his sister got there.
Quickly, he cupped the hand full of cherries to his face, crammed them in, and started chomping frantically.
Raymond had imagined ecstasy, joy, and bliss as he indulged in the forbidden fruit. But this was not to be, because pie cherries are SOUR! There was a reason that Raymond's father had tried to keep his son from eating those cherries.
As Kaytlin came closer to Raymond's tree, and as sour cherry juice oozed down his chin Raymond couldn't help but utter, "UUMB, UUMB, EEE-YACK!"
As Kaytlin heard the strange sounds coming from the pie cherry trees, she walked over to the tree where Raymond had been hiding.
"What are you doing in that tree?" she asked her brother.
"YEE-ACK! Ptuuie, ptuuie, ptuuie," was all her brother could say as he spat out not only the cherry pits, but the sour tasting fruit as well.
Then Kaytlin laughed as her brother ran to the garden hose and thoroughly rinsed out his mouth. His mother who was resting in a lawn chair commented, "My, you seem real thirsty, Raymond."
"He tried some of those sour cherries," smiled Kaytlin.
"Oh, Raymond, not my pie cherries. Honey, those things are so sour that the only way they're ever sweet is if you put them in a pie with lots of sugar.
Later that night, Raymond's dad asked him, "Son, I let you eat from all the trees in all our orchards, except two. Raymond lowered his eyes to the ground. "Why in the world would you want to eat sour cherries when you've got all those sweet ones?" Raymond's dad shook his head.
Needless to say, Raymond learned a good lesson that day and never again did he eat fruit from the forbidden tree, unless his mother had sweetened it liberally and put it in a pie.