The Rotten Apple Tree ( a metaphor)

At a particularly tough time in my life, my sister sent me a touching handmade card. In crafty silver ink she had written a quote about an apple tree. Something about men wanting the low lying fruit because they were easier to pick and the fruit highest on the tree requiring a little more work to get to.
I had just ended probably one of the most harrowing relationships of my adult life......fast on the heels of a heartbreaking divorce caused by my own incessant desire to pick the rotten apples. The low lying fruit.
In the card of course, my sister had meant I  was the apple at the top of the tree and a few of the easier to pick apples were the ones on the branches below me. I may have been that luscious red apple at the top but I sure had a habit of keeping company with the rotten ones on the lower branches.
The ones who would lie, cheat and steal from me, abandon and verbally abuse my children and humiliate me in front of others. What was left of me anyway.
The irony is that often enough this "low lying fruit" was disguised cleverly as perfectly good enough to eat.
That being the point. How can one tell they have a rotten apple in the bunch?

In my life, I've had the good luck to have a few blue ribbon worthy apples in my basket.
Somehow, though---I just kept reaching for those that were bruised, filled with worms and  already discarded and rolling around precariously before I stumbled upon them--deciding they looked good enough despite the bruise or two on the outer skin.

It would take me a very long time before I became discerning enough to stop picking rotten apples.
You cannot make anything sweet or delicious with a rotten apple. No matter how hard you try.
If you come across one or two rolling around your feet, leave them there. They are the ones that were picked at one time and thrown away because they were soft, bruised, mealy and infested with things not healthy enough for consumption.


Try making a blue ribbon life with a rotten apple. I dare you.


                                                                                                   CJ Ellis

The original quote she had written on the card is below.