The Apples The Ladder and The Fall and The Rose

Our beautiful apples - wheelbarrows full of them.

My husband up the fateful ladder....

Saturday night sky from the upstairs landing window - with a shooting star cloud effect...

 Sunday in Sidmouth - you can't walk on this part of the beach because of the landslides..

You wouldn't know from this photo that the promenade was heaving with families enjoying the sunshine like we were.

I've been waiting for a dry day to pick the apples. Saturday was perfect. My husband did a stirling job - climbing into the tree to reach the ripest red ones on the top branches....leaving the still unripe ones for another day. My job - to sort and store them in Sainsbury's cardboard boxes and stack them in the shed - but I felt bombarded by the storm of perfumed red and gold fruit...

 Just before we came in for lunch I asked my husband to prune the rambling rose on the back trellis. He   set up the ladder and started attacking the long whippy stems at least 8 feet in the sky. I don't know exactly what happened but I watched completely helpless as he shouted out, the ladder collapsed one way and he fell backwards onto the ground with a great crash, right on top of our pussy cat's grave, his legs trapped in the metal rungs, hitting his head on the compost bin. He kept screaming,

My leg, my leg....

 I imagined broken bones, concussion, contusion, blood, the hospital....but within a few minutes he was untangled, standing upright, brushing off the soil and dead leaves from his neck and saying he was alright -  but limping.....badly bruised on the back and side of his leg.

I dose us both with Rescue Remedy for shock. I notice how although it was my husband who fell I feel guilty, that it was somehow my fault.....he was tired after picking the apples, I shouldn't have asked him, I've been meaning to replace our old rickety ladder with a sturdier one....

And I notice how immediately I make those thoughts real - afterwards, clearing up the rose cuttings, shoving them into a recycling bag, one of the long thorny branches whips back into my face, cutting my top lip, blood drips onto my sleeve....

But I'm beginning to see how attacking myself is so much worse than a bruise or a cut.... and that maybe the way to surrender, to let kindness in, is to stop seeing myself as the enemy.......

And to start noticing what else I could see  - like at the end of the prickly,waving branch that drew  my blood is a late rose -  soft petals falling open, pure white  - the colour of peace.