Peachy Keen

22

There isn’t much that screams late summer like a fresh and juicy peach. Peaches make me both happy, and a little bit melancholy.

Happy, because..really, let’s be serious here, what’s not to be happy about when you have a big, bright, warm, juicy peach to eat…you know…unless you are allergic to them and they might kill you or something like that. But besides that potential pitfall, what’s not to love about a peach. The kind that you have to eat over a sink because the juice runs down your chin. Earlier peaches “look” great, but are usually hard and flavourless, or pulpy and flavourless. I know that they say that we eat with our eyes…but when you know what a fresh ripe peach that you pluck from a tree yourself is “supposed” to taste like, outside of that prime peach season they are just a grand disappointment. So many of the peaches that I have bought from grocery stores look beautiful, but are such a terrible letdown.

A little bit melancholy because when the peaches are at their absolute best…it is also late summer and the arrival of perfect peaches means that we are in our final weeks of the warm and lazy days of the summer months and that there are dark and dismal days ahead….for an extended period.

Focus on what matters, focus on the moment, focus on the amazing flavour of a ripe and juicy peach and revel in the gratitude of just stopping and enjoying something so perfect. And find a bit of gratitude that an orchardist planted the trees that grew the fruit, and cared for them long enough that they produced. Be grateful for the hands that picked the fruit and packed it carefully for transport to your local grocer or farmer’s market. Be grateful for the people who presented the fruit in such a way that it caught your attention and enticed you to bring it home to experience the taste. We take all of these things for granted sometimes; we shouldn’t.