Apples – The American Fruit

  • Post published:10/26/2015
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Ralph Waldo Emerson called apples the American fruit. Certainly the legend of Leominster-born Johnny Appleseed, once an orchardist and later a traveler on the frontier planting apples, is one of our favorite American stories. However, archeologists have found European fossil evidence of apples growing in prehistoric times. Apples had a long history before they ever made it to America. These early apples were actually very tiny crab apples. Evolution carried on its slow work over the eons. The…

Earth Day – April 22, 2014

  • Post published:04/22/2014
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  How can we celebrate Earth Day every day? We can grow a garden. Forget the lawn; grow veggies and herbs and berries, trees and flowers. Gardens, ornamental and edible can feed lots of pollinators and other bugs that need different kinds of foliage to nibble on, so that they can be eaten by birds and other wild creatures. Plants are pretty low on the food chain so that makes them especially important. Edible plants feed us healthy…

Apple Harvest – Disease Resistant Liberty Apple

  • Post published:10/11/2013
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My apple harvest is at high tide. The whole neighborhood has been talking about what a great apple year this is, so I am not alone. Right now I am harvesting Liberty apples. We planted this Liberty tree in 1983. I think. We chose it because of its disease resistance. We have taken very little care of it, except for some not very expert pruning. This self-fertile tree continues to bear, and the fruit is remarkably unblemished with…

Walk on the Wildside with Sue Bridge

  • Post published:08/31/2013
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How would you plan your retirement if you had already received a degree from Wellesley College, earned a further degree in Russian and Middle Eastern Studies, hitchhiked to Morocco, lived in Paris, worked for the United Nations, as well as in the cable TV world, and for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper? Sue Bridge, with the urging of a Northampton friend, bought eight acres of hilly land in Conway. For the past seven years her retirement project has…

Life Under Our Feet – and Fruit Over Our Heads

  • Post published:05/13/2013
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There is life under our feet. I have talked about living soil from time to time, but in his New York Times essay yesterday  Jim Robbins says that "One-third of living organisims live in  soil. But we know littel about them." Well, of course I know about worms and  bugs and the mycellium that I can see, and I know the soil is full of microbes, but to think that one-third of ALL living organisims live in the soil…

A is for Apple – A to Z Blogger Challenge

A is for Apple and I found 36 varieties of Apples with names that begin with A right here.  I've known about the Arkansas Black and the Arlington Pippin but that was the end of it for me. But there is also the Ambrosia apple, a modern Canadian apple similar to the Golden Pelicious, the American Summer Pearmain Apple, very juicy, the Autumn Gold apple, better than Golden Delicious and obvously, many many more! I became interested in old apple…

Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

  • Post published:11/02/2012
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  David Buchanan and I met at the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD)  reunion in September where he gave a six minute talk about what he had been doing since he graduated in 2000. He talked as fast as he could, and I listened as fast as I could, but I was glad I could slow the journey when I received a copy of his new book Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter.…

The ABCs of Heritage Apples, and Others

  • Post published:10/27/2012
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A is for Apple, but if we look at heritage apples we can march right through the alphabet. Baldwin, Cox’s Orange Pippin, (Old) Delicious, Esopus Spitzenberg, Golden Russet, and on through to Northern Spy, Roxbury Russet, Stayman Winesap and Westfield Seek-No-Farther. The Roxbury Russet and Westfield Seek-No-Farther remind us that some apples had a very local fame and audience before they spread to wider fields. In fact, Roxbury Russet was the first named apple in Massachusetts. Even though…

Berries are the Best

  • Post published:08/26/2012
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Berries are the best. They are delicious summer fruits, especially when they are picked right off the bush and brought in for a morning bowl of cereal, a beautiful fruit tart, or a pot of jam. They are easy for the gardener because they are perennial plants and require little fussing over the years of their life. In Heath we pay a lot of attention to blueberries. One section of town is called Burnt Hill because the hillside…

Apple Blossom Time

  • Post published:05/27/2011
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I hope this photo give some sense of the amazing bloom of the Sargent crabapple. It is  not 15 feet tall, but it is at least 15 feet wide and was planted about 15 years ago. It thrives in the Sunken Garden even though it is very wet in the spring.  It is now in full flower - almost a single tree-sized blossom at this point. This apple tree, name unknown, produces apples but they are not the…