Adam's Apples

The last of the year. As the harvest and the market and the season swell with unbearably sweet ripe fecundity, At that very moment of climactic eucatastrophe, when the labor and the fullness and the promise of the year are redeemed: cruel ice of winter, mud and blossom of spring, the heat and toil of summer, and all, That is when the feast is undermined, the seeds of contraction have taken root.

A rainbow touches down over a fall farmers market in Arlington, Massachusetts, earlier today. What's at the end of that rainbow?

This foundling apple can be large, but the ones I bought are medium sized. They are classically conical and tapered with pronounced ribbing, a pretty light yellow with an attenuated red-orange blush. The peel is smooth and glossy. Click the photo if you like for a closer look at lenticels, streaks, and tiny stipples of flyspeck.

Above: It was so windy at Arlington's Farmers Market earlier today that this vendor did not even try to set up their usual awning.

Yes, it's the King David apple. With a mild case of watercore .

Just a small sample of what was for sale last weekend at Shelburne Farm in Stow, Massachusetts.

Apple tasting featuring (left to right) Crimson Crisp, Cox's Orange Pippin, Ashmead's Kernel, and Macoun. I organized an apple tasting for my colleagues where I work today, and got a visual demonstration of their collective taste in apples.

Yes, there was a flaw in this apple. I bought it anyway because so what, and also because it was the only one left. I've been wanting to retaste Sweet 16 ever since some of my readers told me that my 2011 tasting sample did not express this apple's true flavors. So:

Seek no further! This large and essentially spherical apple (though slightly oblate) has a very pretty layered blush that is in some places a warm pink. In others there is a kind of Indian red, with brown tones. (A second sample is a little conical and has a more classical shape.)

  Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays ou il exist deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage? How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six kinds of cheese? We may not be in DeGaulle territory yet, but I was delighted to count 25 varieties of apples at my local farmers market today.