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Little compares to the first bite into the first apple of autumn. Year after year, we loaded our red cart into the car and returned home hours later with apples of all sorts and a bag of cider donuts with some already missing. Memories of apple harvests with my young family helped me push through the harsh winters.

I can fill a photo book with pictures of my children scampering through the rows of low-boughed trees, hanging from the branches and taking turns in the wagon; If I ever get around to digging the photos out of a long forgotten box that is.

Our children are grown now, building memories of their own, but I hoped to continue the tradition even though not everyone near and dear agrees with me that apple orchards are places where fond memories are grown. For my husband, the squish underfoot of fallen apples, and competing with bees for the fruit is the stuff of bad dreams.  The bees are not a high point but they are worth it all to snap an apple off the branch and bite into it: reddened by the cool, warmed by the sun, much awaited for-the harvest-fresh apple.

Compromise can bring its own harvest too, so in that spirit I suggested we venture out to find Bronx style pizza, swing by the orchard, grab some already picked apples and apple cider donuts and call it a memory maker. It was a memory maker and the stuff of bad dreams as well.

I scoured the internet for a Bronx style pizza place near the orchard and hit pay dirt...excellent reviews had my mouth watering. We set the address into the GPS but after several circles round the block we decided the reviews had failed to mention this epicurean delight had succumbed to the falling economy and rising cheese cost.

Like the GPS, we recalculated and headed to a well loved local diner. Everyone in a 60 mile radius had the same idea so the crush of the crowd, the clatter of dishes against silver ware, the youngest diners screeching, all became part of this memory we were building. The soda was flat and mental note to self, "When will you remember how bad decaf diner coffee tastes and resist ordering it?!"

When a gap in the constant foot traffic past our table developed we slid quickly out of the booth braced for the orchard memory.

Passing the orchards rich with their bumper crop would have let us know we were near the entrance but we did not need them as a sign. The bumper to bumper traffic was a sufficient hint. We sat in stand still traffic until I suddenly remembered that I was the only person in the car that ate fresh fruit and that it was the children that loved cider donuts, not us.

We turned the car around and headed for home, stopping, ironically, at a farm stand 2 miles from home for apples.

I suppose building memories doesn't mean they have to be good memories. This day goes down as the day we had no pizza, drank lousy coffee and flat soda, developed ringing ears from the diner din and saw more cars than apples at the orchard.

It was an afternoon with my husband and I guess when it comes right down to it our memories will mostly be about the ride, the early colors, the conversation and the shared memories. With a nearly empty nest, we are building new memories of our companionship. A good harvest memory after all.