Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree...

It started long ago in the garden of Eden, when Adam said to Eve…”Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me!”

The story begins as a bit of a game, turns into quite a drama and then? Well, the rest becomes history. 

The original characters, Adam and Eve share some rather complicated genetics. For starters, they have the same Father. Now, that is a long story best left for another telling. Suffice to say, it involves complicated transplant surgery and gender realignment. 

A Snake also appears and his story gets a little complicated as well. Perhaps we shall leave him until the end.

Now Adam and Eve live in this wonderful garden, virtually a paradise. As mentioned, they have a Father. The main thing about this Dude, was that He was rather authoritarian by nature. 

True, He didn’t impose too many rules. He did however have one huge phobia. In this garden was a special tree, a beautiful old apple tree. The Father made it very clear to Adam and Eve that they were not to go near this tree. His instructions were quite clear, “Keep your hands off the apple tree!”

He was also rather specific about the consequences for breaking this rule. He rarely made threats but when He did, they were not idle. When He said: “Touch the fruits of this tree and YOU DIE!”, He meant it. This warning tended to keep the garden residents in line.

For the most part Adam and Eve were quite obedient. They loved living in the garden. All their needs were met and Eve, though subservient to Adam, never had to cook. 

Adam enjoyed frolicking with Eve and was thrilled not to have to use protection to ensure their sole occupancy of this wondrous land. 

He was rather relentless in his pursuit of Eve, imploring her with logic, like, “You know Eve, the purpose of a man is to love a woman.”

If that argument failed, Adam would move on to a more persuasive plea.

He would coyly implore “Who’s your daddy?”

Then he would go hard core with, “Come on baby, the time is right, put your arms around me, hold me tight and we’ll play the game of love.” Eve usually capitulated and, for the most part, enjoyed his shenanigans. 

All was fine for a number of years. The pair seemed to get along quite well.

Their duties were few, time stretched out in a series of idyllic, sun filled days with nothing much to do but rest and frolic.

This might have gone on for eternity except for one thing...Eve got bored.

Adam’s demands for ‘love’ became rather tiresome and she began to long for something more.

Enter Snake. He was a charmer and very persuasive in his attempts to get Eve to pick and eat an apple off the forbidden tree.( In a past life, he might have been a lawyer.) Whatever, his powers were great and he managed to seduce Eve, who ate the apple from the tree. 

Immediately she knew she’d made a mistake and began plotting how best to get Adam to join her and maybe lessen the chance of their Dad following through on his death threat.

Eve was not above using her femine guiles to charm and seduce Adam. Eventually she overcame his reservations and they both ate the forbidden fruit.

They tried to hide the dirty deed from their Father, but He was no dummy, knew exactly what they’d done and man oh man, did He ever throw a hissy fit.

After much thunderous shouting, waving of arms and throwing lightning bolts about, He banished the two from the garden of Eden.

They were forbidden to return.

 To make sure, He slammed the gates shut, securing them with a padlock. The guilty pair knew that life was about to become a lot more interesting and, more difficult, as they fled from His fury.

Eve knew somehow that she was going to get the short end of this stick and most likely would end having to cook and perform other domestic chores. She knew Adam was not going to be much help and set about finding ways to avoid him in order to accomplish her multitude of daily chores. She began to suffer migraines, which conveniently held him at bay - temporarily. 

Adam would sulk for a while, but would eventually get back to indulging in his favourite game - how to get Eve to play the game of love.

Eve missed their apple tree. It had always been a place of solace for her. She quite regretted her taking of the forbidden fruit. She longed to go back to her carefree days, conveniently forgetting the boredom that came with.

Eve, resourceful as always, had one trick up her sleeve. During Big Daddy’s temper tantrum, she snuck a seed from the forbidden apple. She had placed the seed beneath her tongue. Through all the Big Guys ranting, she kept her silence, knowing he’d eventually run out of steam. She sighed, knowing there was not much chance of Him changing His mind, but began plotting how she might overcome this adversity thrust upon them.

And so they wandered far and wide, searching for a new home. Eve began to feel safe enough to risk taking out the seed from her mouth. She found a spot to plant it, carefully watered and nurtured it until the seed grew into a magnificent tree.

It was a magical tree and long after Adam and Eve were gone, it lived on. 

Many, many years pass.

As mere mortals, Adam and Eve had been very busy. Adam’s pursuit of ‘playing love games’ with Eve, brought about a lot of children.

Eve, who had settled into the reality of life chained to a bed and the kitchen, knew that the tree she had planted was to be her greatest legacy.

We can’t exactly trace William Tell’s heritage back directly to Eve, but somehow, he did manage to find the tree she had planted.

Bill was a bit of a scrapper and not unlike the Big Guy from the garden of Eden, was prone to using his children to get out of trouble and illustrate some moot point he may have been obsessing about.

This story ends somewhat well. Bill’s kid survived the ordeal of having his dad use him for a target while he practised shooting an apple off his head. 

The tree also managed to survive, moving down into history.

We next find a renowned thinker, named Isaac. He was a bit of a ‘natural philosopher’ and loved to contemplate various and sundry mysteries. He was quite the scientist and was always pondering how to explain, what often seemed inexplicable. 

The story goes that as a youth, sitting beneath an apple tree, (yes, it was Eve’s) reviewing certain laws of physics, an apple fell from above, bonked him on the head and lo and behold, inspired a great thought.

From this experience he developed a whole new theory. It was very enlightening and revolutionized much of what was then known about gravity.

Also, thanks to his ancestor, the illustrious Eve, he became quite a good cook. He was well known for his desserts, the most famous one using figs. The fig tree may, or may not have come from Eve also. 

We have much to thank this woman for.

We shall move along down the line and tell the story of a young boy named George.

He was a thoughtful child but also adventurous, a true descendent of our lovely Eve. 

His father had given the six year old George a hatchet as a present.

George could not resist going out into the family orchard to experiment with the sharpness of his gift and ended up causing quite a bit of damage. He was especially hard on an old cherry tree. 

When confronted by his angry father, he confessed to his surgery, apologised for the deed and though reprimanded, was praised for having told the truth.

Secretly, his father was simply grateful that George had left one tree unscathed, an old apple tree, his favourite.

Somehow he knew this was the ‘mother of all apple trees’ and was most relieved that it survived George’s attack and would live on into the future.

Now George’s father happened to know a guy called Johnny Chapman. This man was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of the North American continent. He had taken apple seeds from the tree in Washington’s orchard and with careful tending, managed to spread the progeny of Eve’s single seed into a trail of magnificent trees.

Our story ends beneath an ancient apple tree. It may well have descended from the seed stolen by Eve long ago in the garden of Eden.

Our modern day characters are a rather voluptuous female named Lilith and her randy companion, a heavily tattooed fellow called Snake.

Lilith was none too domestic. She mostly enjoyed being, well...lazy.

Snake was none too ambitious himself and spent most of his time trying to lure Liltih into compromising positions, some in private, but often in the great outdoors.

One of their favourite spots to frolic and play games of love, was beneath a beautiful old apple tree.

They often pondered as to its age, somehow sensing that it had survived for eons, across time and space.

They would lie naked, languorously wrapped around each other, gazing up into the heavens. 

To the bottom of their souls, they each knew that this indeed was heaven on earth. 

Their own private Eden.

Paradise found.