Adam's Apples

I have two of these pretty red apples today, large and medium.  ¶  But note "today" is mid October, as I saved one of them to eat a bit later in the season.  ¶  The smaller is a bit asymmetrical from some accident of growth, but both are ribbed and wear constellations of large light lenticel dots and a very faint light bloom of excess natural wax.  ¶  Rub that off and the apple has a semigloss shine. (Always wash an apple before eating, not to remove the harmless bloom but because you don't know where it has been.)

What do you get if you cross a McIntosh with a Golden Delicious?  ¶  There are many examples of that. Today we are comparing two apples: Spencer (L) and Brock.  ¶  Both are " Mcintosh x Golden Delicious ": grown from the seed of a Mac pollinated by Golden D.

There are only a few more weeks left until Thanksgiving and the end of the outdoor markets.  (Photo:  These big red Cortlands were for sale at the Davis Square, Somerville (Massachusetts) farmers market earlier today. )  The weather has turned brisk, as it does in November, and the sun is low in the sky during those times when it is up at all.

On a cheerful Wednesday in mid October, a friend and I took a detour on our way to farmers market and visited Baldwin Common in Wilmington, Massachusetts. There we paid our respects to the man who popularized the Baldwin apple.  ¶  Baldwin is a great apple , once the most celebrated in New England and perhaps America.  ¶  They are ripe in mid October. A farmer at our weekly market grows them.

I've got two Allington apples today: one large, the other slightly smaller. They are classically shaped, long stemmed and nearly unribbed.  ¶  The apples wear a semigloss skin of yellow that is almost a spring green, with a partial red blush that comprises darker red steaks and specks in an orange wash.  ¶  There is some russet in the mix around the stem well, but the kind of textured, subdued olive-toned red you can see in my photos is mostly just the thin blush, with its streaks and spots, spread over the underlying green-tinged yellow.

Darkness falls in America early this month as we set our clocks back an hour for Daylight Savings Time.  (Photo:  Electric lighting illuminates the apples at the Davis Square farmers market in Somerville, Massachusetts, earlier today. )  Night was falling at 5 pm at farmers market in Davis Square (Somerville, Massachusetts) today. You could have bought 14 different kinds of apples there.