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I saw a squirrel with a newspaper this morning.

No, seriously. I actually did see a squirrel with a newspaper.

Well, with a sheet of newspaper, anyway.

In the first hour after sunrise, before people are up and about, the city belongs to the squirrels. (I actually groaned when I saw where the Sun came up today: already so far South of his Northern-most Midsummer rising, rapidly approaching due East and the Equinox.)

At that hour, it was just me and the squirrels. I'd gone out to collect a case of apples: the next best thing to having an apple tree yourself is to have picking rights on someone else's.

That's when I saw the squirrel. Actually, in the still morning I heard it before I saw it. Compared to a squirrel, a full sheet of newspaper is huge, but the squirrel was doing his best to drag the awkward thing along. Unfortunately, he was trying to walk with one forefoot on the ground and the other on top of the sheet, and not having an easy time of it.

A squirrel with a newspaper? Yep, it's that time of year. Sun going South: Winter coming. Now, as the apples are picking, is time to start insulating that dray of yours with all those good air-trapping things like leaves and sheets of newspaper, that are going to keep you warm through the cold to come.

(Good old English. What other language has a specific name for a squirrel's nest?)

The squirrel lining its nest, me gathering the apples that I'm going to cook down into the applesauce that will sweeten the long nights ahead.

An apple a day has many health benefits and tastes good too! As I write this, I can smell the applesauce cooking in my slow cooker. Made from unpeeled, cut apples, and simmered a while with half cider and half water, to cover, my applesauce needs no further seasoning or sweetening. Once cooked, I put it through my trusty food mill—I picked mine up at a yard sale, however they are available both in stores and on the internet. The money you save on canned or otherwise processed applesauce will soon pay for the food mill and your applesauce will be more nutritious.

This easy peasy recipe will result in one of the most useful items in your pantry which can be used in your cookery, as a daily health drink household cleanser, skin and facial toner, a hair rinse and doubtless dozens of excellent ideas. Hippocrates, the founding father of medicine in ancient Greece, taught that he depended on two medicinal tonics, honey and vinegar. Apple cider vinegar lowers cholesterol and blood pressure and helps strengthen bones.  Best of all, this costs mere pennies to make as you are using the cores and peels only from the apples. Bake a couple of pies while you brew up a tonic to health booster. When you add herbs to vinegar, you are enhancing the healing power for the best of both worlds.  All you need is:

 8 organic apple cores and peels

Consider the apple tree and its ways.

Early in summer, it sets as much fruit as it can.

Later on, it drops many—even most—of those hard little unripe apples.

With what it can draw from Earth, Sun, and Thunder—the Deep Gods of the witches—the tree has only so much main—energy—at its disposal. The resources available to the tree to nurture its apples are limited. With what it has, it can produce either many small, or a few select, apples.

As I rake up fallen green fruit, I reflect. The Craft is an apple tree. Why do so many leave?

Don't get me wrong: I love apples.

But when's the last time that you bit into an apple and had juice run down your forearm and drip from your elbow?

A good pear is truly a full-body experience.

Pears. I just ate my first one of the season. OMGs.

The Witch Goddess's sacred flower is, of course, the Rose, but the Rose family is a large one. Apples are roses. So are pears. Cut one with the stem. Like an apple, it will show forth the Flower of Life. And cut across the stem, behold: the Fivefold Star of Rebirth.

We've been eating pears for a long time: since, apparently, the Neolithic, if not before. They ate them in the Lake Villages of Stone Age Switzerland. They're mentioned in Linear B inscriptions from Mycenaean Greece. The name pear comes ultimately from Latin, which got it from Greek, which got it from the Phoenicians (p'ri = “fruit”).

And every pear's a little goddess. Hold one in your hand. It's like one of those big-hipped Mamas that the ancestors made to make the garden grow. It irks me when people say that a situation has gone “pear-shaped” to mean that it's gone wrong. Is the implication really that perfection = round? Round things roll away and break. Low centers of gravity mean stability.

Cut across the core, the Star of Life.

Cut with the core, the Gate of Life.

If witches have a sacred fruit, it's the Eternal Apple. Even our afterlife is the Apple-Tree Island, where the dead eat of the Fruit of Life and grow young and full of sap again.

Asked why there were so many witches in Basque country, Pierre de Lancre—the Inquisitor who spearheaded the Basque witch-trials—replied: Are you kidding? That's Apple Country up there. Those people eat nothing but apples. No wonder they're all witches.

Indeed.

Fasting on the day of November Eve is my oldest personal custom. The last thing that I'll eat before I begin my fast at sundown tonight is an apple.

All night and all day I'll fast. The dead do not eat.

When you see the Tree, you understand right away that this is the Mother Tree of All Apples.

A farmhouse, now long gone, once stood here. Nothing remains but a pile of old foundation stones.

But the Three Springs still bubble from the creek-bed, and feral apple trees fill the Secret Valley.

The Mother Tree is oldest, and biggest, of them all.

Orchard trees are pruned, bred low for easy picking. This tree has known neither pruning saw, nor the shade of other trees. Three with outstretched arms could barely span its girth.

Approach, and understand. Three sister trees—sprung, maybe, from a single apple—have grown up together, merging, in mutual embrace: the Three that are One, the One that is Three. You'd go far to find a better image of the Triple Goddess.