Peach flowers by Fan Wen, Wikipedia

by Roberta McReynolds

The autumn colors had been slow to emerge in my region of drought-stricken central California this year; the temperatures ranged in the 70s-80s throughout October. My mood lifted at the first sight of welcome rain clouds riding the jet stream, generating cooler days. Like me, the leaves also began to respond to the seasonal changes.

Many of my errands take me past a peach orchard about two miles from home. I'd been admiring the color for weeks and each time I travelled past those trees I regretted that I hadn't remembered to shove my camera in my purse. I should probably mention that don't own a smart phone with fancy capabilities. I have a little not-so-smart pre-paid phone that I keep handy in case of emergencies. While it does have a camera function, the resulting pictures lack any quality.

The orchard eventually turned vibrant golden yellow ochre. Nearly half of the foliage had dropped, forming a carpet of color between the rows of trees. The scene had been changing gradually and now reached its peak. We had a blustery storm on the way and I knew this perfect image wouldn't last even a few more hours, so I just had to go back and capture it. 

Go back?  Yeah … it's been one of those days.

I took my husband to an appointment with his doctor first thing in the morning, only to discover they had no record of it in the computer. His appointment card was at home, naturally, so I couldn't convince the receptionist that we were supposed to be there. I assume she was recently hired since we'd never met before. Instead of offering a solution, she initiated a long, pointless dialogue about the dates of Mike's previous visits. She appeared to go deaf whenever I endeavored to explain why Mike had an appointment. We were just wasting time, so we abandoned our mission.

We had passed that stunning orchard on the way through the countryside, and again on our departure, still without a camera.

The outing was not totally a lost cause. Our list of errands included a stop at the credit union to take care of a little business. Then we headed to the office supply store because I had a coupon for '$10.00 off any purchase' and Mike needed ink for his printer (yes, we have 'his & hers' computers and printers, but no smart phones; I never claimed that our cognitive processes would make any sense to anyone else). As soon as we got in the store, he realized he couldn't remember the number for the ink cartridge. I can't blame him. We've all been there, right? It was partially my fault, because he had a bag of used cartridges to recycle that had the product number on them, but I had already turned in a bag of my cartridges earlier that month which maxed out our monthly quota. So, I told him to leave his empty cartridges at home. It made perfect sense at the time.

Mike was certain the product number included the number '9' in it somewhere. Process of elimination left us with only two choices: #69 or #79. He selected #69. Our next stop was to use a '20% off Everything!' coupon at the pet store where we restocked our inventory of canned cat food and scooped bulk cat litter into two recyclable buckets for a savings of $11.30. Our final stop was lunch accompanied with a coupon that saved us another $6.99. All the money we saved helped to mollify some of my nagging irritation regarding that futile trip to the doctor's office.

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