The epic battle between girl and nature

My parents have a couple of pear trees in their yard and ever since I was a kid, it has been my job to climb the trees and pick the pears that cannot be reached by the ladder alone. It's always been my favorite chore around the yard. I missed out on this joy the past three years, what with traveling around the world and all, and so since I'm around again, I was NOT planning on missing out on the pear harvest this year.

After over two weeks of straight rain, I was beginning to despair of being able to go out and pick them before they got overripe or simply floated away. But finally, the rains let up a bit this weekend, and Mom and I were able to go out to see if there was any good fruit left on the trees.

Luckily, there was and we were able to get a few bags of pears that looked edible. Now, there is a slight amount of hazard to being up in the top of a tree. For example, there are all kinds of insects buzzing around and inside the pears, there are the inevitable twigs that don't like for you to invade their territory and take payment out of your skin, there are the odd pears still above you that take offense to you moving the branches to which they are attached and show their anger by falling on your head, but usually, these hazards are slight enough and I come away with only a few bug bites, a bruise or two and a few scratches on my arms. Unfortunately, this year, I failed to take into account the added hazard of the tree (especially the bark) being waterlogged. It was just a little bit harder to actually stay in the tree as the tree fought back at me. Don't worry, I still won the war and brought home the spoils, but the battle wounds were a little more fierce.