Ode to a sweet peach

“A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother’s orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes.”
Melissa Fay Greene, ‘Praying for Sheetrock’

(Peaches /Julie Cook / 2014)

Shhh don’t tell, but these are South Carolina Peaches.
There is nothing more splendid than a summer’s ripe peach. . .

““““““““““` ““““““““““ ““““““““

Visiting cousins, who lived on a small rural farm in mid eastern Georgia, a young city girl, no more than 7, always made an immediate bee line for the orchard.
Standing small before a bountiful quest, yellow jackets zipping from tree to tree, she saw the challenge and heard the call.

Hand over hand–lifting each leg up a tad higher, tender limb upon limb, this little girl would climb higher and further until reaching the tallest branch.
Here hung the largest, the sweetest and ripest fruit.
Peach trees are not tall trees, but to a little girl, they might as well have been giants.

Haphazardly and full of trepidation, she’d unsteadily reach out with one free hand while clinging desperately to the tree with the other small hand.
Barely yet triumphantly grasping the fuzzy prize.

Settling back in the crook of the tree, yellow jackets vying for the first bite,
the young girl held the furry ball to her nose breathing in the heady fragrance.
Savoring the nano second before taking the giant juicy bite, she eagerly bites through the fuzzy outer layer, releasing a flood of sweet nectar which trickles down her chin.

As summers long past come flooding sweetly back with the sight of a single peach . . .