I just paid 80 cents for a not very big apple at the supermarket. A bag of four apples was $3.20. I’m eating one now while staring at that dumb, useless, flowering crab-apple tree we planted in the side yard four years ago. What were we thinking about? Flowering crab apples? If we had planted a real apple tree four years ago, I could be eating them right now. Somebody, please, smack me. Real apple trees have beautiful flowers just like crab apples. Real apple trees cost the same. Real apple trees have ... apples.

It’s too late to plant apple trees now, I’ll have to wait until next spring. By then apples will probably be $2 apiece. You’d think they were watering them with oil – in a sense, they are. How much gas does it take to get an apple from my yard to my mouth? None. Store-bought apples come by truck, sometimes from a long way away. Like everyone else, I’m trying to learn how to live with the high price of energy. I bought a bunch of those curly-cue light bulbs that use 75 percent less energy. It took a while, but, finally, every bulb in my house has been changed. The day I screwed in the last bulb, they raised my electric rates. So my big savings turned out to be zero. If we hadn’t changed them, we’d be in the hole.