Summer time and this year apple time! I was lucky enough to have my granddaughter be part of the tradition that I shared with my Grandmother. Apple picking time at Grandma Brown's was a Saturday morning duty. We were paid five cents and an ice cream cone. The three apple trees although close in proximity, to a young child could be an entire orchard. An orchard not filled with wonderment but with a mind field of rotten apples and bending backs filling wooden buckets. It was not the money or the ice cream cone at the time it was later. After the bath and running across the gravel to cross the street to Grandma's house. Noisy, three kids bumbling into a room fresh from supper and seeing the pies all laid out on the counter. Sitting at the table, still warm pies with ice cream and then we understood why we stood in the backyard picking up apples. Two days ago I made my memories of apple pie picking and making  a pie with my granddaughter. It was the Iowa sky, the limbs of the apple trees touching the ground and most of all the smile on my granddaughter's face. My grandmother, Violet Brown, I know would be proud and happy.