A Picnic in My Grandmother's Orchard

My grandmother's apple orchard in Washington has forty-two trees, some of them planted by her father in the 1930s. Every September, the whole family comes for a picnic during the harvest.

We spread blankets between the rows. The kids climb trees and throw apples at each other. The adults pick and argue about which variety is best: Honeycrisp, Gala, or the old Gravensteins that only my grandmother still loves.

My grandmother, who is ninety, sits in a lawn chair at the end of the row and directs operations like a general. She knows every tree by its age and its quirks. "That one sulks if you don't prune it right," she says. "That one gives the best pies."

At the end of the day, she makes apple crisp in a giant pan and we eat it warm under the trees. There's no place in the world I'd rather be.