“Watch out!” You see, when gleaning, it is common—if not necessary—to devise a cunning way to get the fruit to drop. In this case, shaking the trees to achieve this goal sufficed. It seemed to provide an effective means of knocking off a good majority of the fruit left on the tree. But I digress.

It was a brisk Saturday morning, and with the dew still spread across the grass, our high school interact club made its way down to a Beatitude center. The façade of the building made it clearly evident of the care that was taken. We arrived and were soon treated to a quaint breakfast. What we were presented was an enticing assortment of food. Their generosity was ineffable. By the look of it, it was high time some of the trees deserved to be stripped of their fruit. So with good intentions, we began the arduous task.

“Hey this is pretty fun.” To be completely honest, it was for a brief period of time. However, it soon became monotonous. Menial, as it was, we carried on the best we could. We soon found ourselves staring down a lane of innumerable trees. The daunting task lay ahead of us, but we were not phased. We realized that if we took on the task with enough moxie; who knows, we could take on an entire citrus orchard.

“You guys take that tree, and we’ll take this one.” At this point, we tried anything to hasten the process. It was just as well; our time was quickly drawing to a close. While I was busy at the task at hand, something had dawned on me; the residents who invariably passed us allows made an effort to thank us. Then, another thought popped into my head: what would I have been doing otherwise? I would be given to lie in bed and be consumed in a lucid dream. For the rest of the day, only one thought permeated my mind: carpe diem.