Paying Attention

Yesterday I wrote about the apples.  Today I was walking past on the way to the shop and I had my phone with me so I thought I would take a photo.  I looked down and saw lots of the big apples, and looked up again - and winced at what I had missed.  Most of the tree is crab apples, but there is one large branch coming off the tree that isn't but is heavily loaded with eating apples.  This is the best photo I could manage

If you look closely you can see lots of little, golden crab apples and a very large sweet apple, all on the same tree.

I remember a while back watching a programme on PBS (which you can get in the UK and is well worth watching) about Johnny Appleseed who went around the settlers in the Mid West selling apple seed and planting it.  However apples do not grow true from seed.  You can plant a seed from the most delicious apple you have ever eaten and anything could come up.  A lot of the seeds planted by Johnny Appleseed and the pioneers apparently did not bring up eating apples but they were okay to make hard cider, which led to problems with drunkenness, which led to the Temperance Movement, which led to all sorts.  Nowadays if you are growing commercial eating apples you choose a healthy rootstock, which could be a crab apple type, and graft a cutting of your choice of apple onto the stock.

I think that the apple tree here may have got confused.  It just goes to show how wonderful the world is.

By the way, I did some crafty conversions on the post following this, and I used Online Conversion.  They are awesome, and I now know where to go if I succumb to some of the absolutely gorgeous stuff on The Greater Good website which has some of the most amazing things but I would have to convert the clothing sizes.  The Online Conversion people not only convert litres to pints but have conversions for clothing and weight and if you look under miscellaneous there are calculations for radioactivity and armour penetration.