The Big Apple

The apple did not come into being with Johnny AS - he may have introduced it to some of North America but the "apple" is a wild plant that has been domesticated and developed into all kinds of varieties. It is a friendly natural tree that proves its versatility in lots of ways. Botanists could do tomes on its characteristics. I love apples and most people do. We start our babies on apple sauce, we drink the juice of the apple and create all kinds of toothsome treats with it. Growers of roses appreciate the apple in a different way. The stalks of the delicate rose are grafted onto apple stock and it hosts the lovely flowers on a strong system. The apple is the subject of lore and fairy tales: the apple that sent Snow White into her sleep, the golden apples of the princess who gathered them, the biblical apple of Eden that Eve was said to present to Adam. The apple can be pressed into juice and turned into beverages that are enjoyed both fermented and not. Pies and butters and other sweet treats are loved by all. There is a recent tale of a woman who, having mental issues, hid out in an abandoned farm house with an apple tree nearby. She survived solely on apples until her supply ran out. She wrote in her journal, how she picked the apples from a tree and stored them in the house for months, portioning them out to take her through the winter. It was the only food she ate thus the apple must be a near perfect food. It was dehydration that took her at last and starvation because she had no more apples to eat. On my grandparents' farm, there were many varieties of apple spread about the orchards. As a child I savored the apples that tasted all the flavours possible in apples. Some were sweet, others tart and still others tangy, but my favorite tree was the Transparent Apple. If you know the variety, its period of perfection is very short. You can read this apple by its colour and those who know it, have their most favorite time. Pie bakers like it when it is not quite ripe, still slightly greenish, those who like them right off the branch, prefer it when they are just turning from tart green to a white tinged with gold. Sweet tooth people pick them when they have softened and are sweet. We young cousins on the farm, ate them any old way and were scolded when we picked them green. We just couldn't wait for them to turn ripe. The Transparent apple tree was my private haven. My tree wasn't far from the fence that kept the bull from entering my grandmother's vegetable plot. The tree trunk was bent and due to its age, gnarly, but its foliage was thick and its fruit incomparably delightful. When all my other cousins who stayed at the farm during school vacations, played in the barn, I read my books in my apple tree. It is my good-place-to-go even today. I suspect it is no longer there in Haney, but in my mind, it is ever lush and inviting. It's the apple of my eye!