Here in the Okanagan, it’s peach season. I am lucky enough to live next to a peach orchard, so I get the full magic of their beauty.
The ripe fruit on the trees are like glowing lanterns in the morning light. It’s as if fairies light the way to start my every day through the heat of summer.
The smell of so much fruit is intoxicating; the combination of a floral and honey sweetness envelopes the canopy under the trees.
To taste a ripe Okanagan peach in an Okanagan orchard is an experience without equal. Its firm flesh crunches just slightly as you bite into it, and the fuzzy skin tickles the roof of your mouth.
The juice runs down your arm as you take another bite, and if the moment is just right, the sun will hit your face at that moment between the trees.
When I was a kid, peaches were an entirely different experience. A juicy ripe peach was a rarity. The ones at the grocery store were often bruised and sometimes mealy. Once cooked up in a crisp they were still tasty, but cut up on my Grape-Nuts cereal they were hit-and-miss.
My dad was a big fan of peaches, but not their fuzzy skin. I remember my mom pouring boiling water over them in the colander so the skin would come off easily.
I wish Daddy could have visited us at Rabbit Hollow. We could have walked through the orchards of Paynter’s Fruit Market and picked them off the trees during u-pick time. Some of them are so perfectly ripe the skin peels off after the first bite!
I was thinking of you tonight, Daddy, as I savoured my peaches and ice cream. The taste of that snow-white vanilla ice cream with those tangy and sweet slices made me think of breakfasts of old.
Grape-Nuts cereal might not be available in Canada anymore, but my memories of them are still fresh, just as the moments we shared eating them. In my mind’s eye, I was back at that tie-dyed dining table sitting next to you as we smiled together, enjoying the flavours in our bowls and beginning another day.