Sunday, June 28, 2015

Thrilling apple tales!

So I collected a few of my favorite stories from this blog in one place.

To see the collection just click here.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

A cast of uncommon characters

The apple harvest may have been uneven, but we've had a bumper crop of apple books. They are a joy to read in the bleak off season.

The challenge in writing such a book is to stay engaging while stepping through many apple descriptions. To make the descriptions parallel enough to permit comparisons without falling into deadly similarity. To use the descriptions to say something as a whole as well as many things in particular.

Rowan Jacobsen, in his Apples of Uncommon Character (Bloomsbury 2014) won me over early with his voice and his views.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Bad apples

May and June, so far from the harvest, make an especially bleak season of the apple year. High-tech industrial storage only gets you so far, and the supermarket apples are really showing their age.

These babies are months away. June 6 photo.

This year where I live the problem is exacerbated by an inexplicable absence of apples from New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina.

Usually these fruits, fresh from the spring harvest below the equator, provide a welcome relief.

The imports ride in around the end of April and tide us over until the real thing begins here in late July.

Though unwelcome, this year's absence creates an opportunity for me to report on apples that I would otherwise avoid: those that have been in storage for as much as 9 months (and counting).