Applejack had a hard day of work waiting for her. As great as her farm is, it was a tough job keeping it running. You have to plant new trees looong before the old are gone. Applejack always puts a lot of love into her work at the family farm, to keep alive what had been growing for generations. She loved caring for the farm, but sometimes even a shiny apple comes with worms.
Today, that worm is the weather. It had been raining outside for the last few days and today the task needed to be done.
So Applejack got up and got ready to dig some holes to plant the new saplings. Grabbing a shovel, her beloved hat and some of her work clothes to stay a bit warmer in the cold rain. She was ready to go… at least kind of. She was thinking about how the rain made her job much harder. Applejack was okay with getting her hooves dirty, but getting almost stuck in the mud while doing a task was a different Story.
She said goodbye to her sister Apple Bloom and Granny Smith before she stepped out of her home and went into the rain, the wet meadows, and the gray sky. As she walked away from her warm and comforting home, she felt a little annoyed by the rain falling down on her mane, and her ears. She looked up into the sky, where there were big gray clouds as far as her eye could see.
A special friend she met on a mission at the Peaks of Peril once told her “that rainbows won’t light up the sky unless you let it rain”. Thinking about what she learned, Applejack started to realize again how important the rain was for watering her apple trees and making them grow healthy and bear the best apples in Equestria. Taking a moment to just feel the rain, she started to appreciate the sound and smell of the rain and the rainbow that might appear afterwards. Actually being in the rain didn’t seem that much of a burden anymore. She would appreciate getting back to her dry and welcoming home even more today. After all, the mud on her hooves was washed away faster than Rainbow Dash could drink a glass of delicious cider.
Applejack thought the rain was a good example of how life is full of contrasts and paradoxes. Sometimes we need things that we don’t like, and sometimes we like things that we don’t need. The important thing is to find a balance and appreciate what we have. She found a new motivation to get her task done and was looking forward to what would be waiting for her. After the Rain.