“Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,

The bee’s collected treasures sweet,

Sweet music’s melting full, but sweeter yet,

The still small voice of gratitude.”

– Thomas Gray

Peaches.  Oh, how I love their fuzzy sweetness.  Each summer I wait and watch for the local orchard to announce that it is picking time; and I pull out my well-used baskets, load them into the car, and spend a morning pulling fruit from the trees.  Call me corny — or fruity, as the case may be — but the whole idea of food literally growing on trees still blows me away.  What a great plan!  And there is no other time of year when I enjoy that awareness more than I do in August.

Monday was the first day for picking this summer, but a visit from old friends took priority.  Tuesday was a reading day with Ivy in preparation for her imminent return to school, and Wednesday was consumed with appointments.  By the time Wednesday evening came, I was so filled with anticipation of my trip to the orchard that I could hardly settle down and go to sleep.  I put the baskets by the back door and lined up my garden sneakers next to them.  Tomorrow would be the day that I would fill two baskets with enough peaches to keep my freezer stocked through the long winter and spring until the next time that food grew on trees.

I sprang out of bed the next day, ahead of the alarm, and looked out the window to see rain.  Rain on peach-picking day?  We have spent a good bit of time this summer obsessing on water.  With the dry spells that have challenged us to keep our gardens growing and our lawns alive during 90-degree days, we have prayed for rain.  With the oil spill in the gulf commanding our attention to our need for clean water, we have been more thankful than ever for  miraculous, life-giving rain.  It falls from the skies through no doing of our own, and lends its magic to the sustaining of life.  It is no less miraculous than food growing on trees; and without the rain, there would be no trees at all.  Still, after all these weeks of hoping for rain, I found myself feeling a bit betrayed that it would arrive on peach day.  I started thinking of when I could reschedule my picking; and I began to realize how full my calendar really is this month.  Suddenly, my most-awaited day of the summer was beginning to feel stressful.

I will risk dating myself here when I tell you what began to play in my mind.  I heard Herman’s Hermits singing, “Don’t go out into the rain, you’re gonna melt, Sugar, oh no,” and I thought, ‘wait a minute, I’m not that sweet.’  Is there any law against picking peaches in the rain?  The last time I checked, getting wet was not the end of my world.  I loaded my baskets into the car and began the twenty-minute drive to the magical world of tree food.  The rain started and stopped along the way as I drove under clouds and then into clear sky.  By the time I arrived at the orchard and made my way to the trees, the slowest intermittent wiper speed was more than enough to handle what was falling.  Seldom have I felt so smug about making a decision.  Here I was with the rows of trees all to myself while other pickers stayed at home and feared the rain — and it really wasn’t raining at all, was it?

I walked to the far end of a row of peach trees, to the place beyond the limits of most pickers, and found trees that just begged to be relieved of their burden.  I reached up my hand and pulled the first luscious peach from its branch, and suddenly I was pelted with all the rain that had clung to the leaves during the early morning showers.  I remembered the Butterfly Effect and thought, ‘if you pick a peach in Pennsylvania, it will start a rainstorm in…Pennsylvania.”  No longer feeling smug, I found myself laughing out loud, all alone in an orchard and enjoying the miracle of peaches growing on trees and rain sustaining life.  It is moments like these that make me realize how much I love my life.  How wonderful to be a part of a world with miracles hanging everywhere you look — and all you have to do is reach out and grab them.  Sweeter still, by grabbing one miracle, I was gifted with another — no, not the rain, “but sweeter yet, the still small voice of gratitude.”