"This winter, I’ll try to prune more gently, and I’ll probably fail. Perhaps the trees will begin to move incrementally back toward pre-human growth patterns."

"Maybe, decades from now, the next human occupant of this land will give up on them entirely and 'prune them with a spade,' as my dad likes to say. Until then, I’ll stand expectantly under the Belle de Boskoop, which by this time of year should be dropping dozens of big, russeted apples on the ground. It has vigorous, almost uncontrollable branches, and we’ve pruned it hard every year in an attempt at sculpting its form. But it reaches ever upward, each lateral proudly unburdened by fruit. If it never crops, it’ll still be here: the Bartleby of my garden, quietly, stubbornly, declining participation in the grind."

Writes Manjula Martin, in "The Rebellion of a Fruitless Apple Tree/As the rest of our culture thrives on overexposure, why shouldn’t a garden have the right to retain an air of mystery?" (The New Yorker).

I'm blogging this article simply because we have apple trees that don't bear fruit. It's a topic that hits close to home, but I was also delighted to see Bartleby, one of my all-time favorite literary characters. Now, I can't help but feel that commenters will zero in on the word "unburdened," which has been said way too many times in the 2024 election cycle. This post was supposed to be a break from all the election blogging. It's about apple trees.

"Anything that you would put in a salad — romaine, spinach, kale, lemon, cucumber, an apple or a pear, sometimes fennel — I shove into my Vitamix..."

"... with a cup of water, lemon juice and a little bee pollen. You can drink it in about 30 seconds, but if I took everything out of that blender and put it in a bowl, it would take me an hour to eat it. That’s a lot of chewing."

Said Ann Patchett, quoted in "Ann Patchett Isn’t Parting With WordPerfect/The best-selling novelist refuses to yield when it comes to writing software, but she’s had a bit of a change of heart on Barnes & Noble" (NYT).

Is chewing too much trouble? Chewing vegetables is, maybe.

I just ran across that, but I'd already been thinking about vegetables. I was trying understand this sentence from the mid-1600s, a sentence that runs on so crazily that I didn't even try to ge to the end:

Canada geese demonstrate the confounding difficulty of eating an apple.

The frustration is palpable. I'm no fan of the Canada goose, but it almost makes you want to cut up an apple for them, doesn't it?

Video by Meade from a mountain bike trail in Wisconsin.

I've got 5 TikToks for you tonight. Let me know what you like best.

1. A way of planting potatoes.

2. A way of slicing apples.

3. Camping... and terrorized by ducks.

4. A song about thinking of what you wanted to say long after it's too late.

5. Coming upon a sandwich station that someone else did.

Here are 5 carefully selected TikToks. Let me know what you like best.

1. The parrot's word play.

2. The life of a live-in private chef in the Hamptons.

3. A strange 19th century courting ritual.

4. Static electricity and the dog.

5. The man without stable footing.

"Manducate" — it's the word of the day at the OED.

I thought it was one of those neo-words, like "mansplain" and "manspreading," but it goes back to the 17th century, and it means "To chew, to eat; spec. to consume (the consecrated host) at the Eucharist." Examples (from the unlinkable OED):

1624 Bp. F. White Replie to Iesuit Fishers Answere 490 To manducate, that is, to chew or swallow, and to let the Element receiued, passe into their stomach....
1822 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 11 161 Whate'er front-tooth can bite, and grinders manducate....
1983 ‘Trevanian’ Summer of Katya (1984) 148 Fell upon the wretched vegetable and manducated it.

"Summer of Katya" is a gothic romance. Isn't it weird that a writer of mere romances would inflict "manducated" on his readers?

How about you? Do you have an appetite for life that ought not to be denied expression? If so, snatch a food item from a living plant, chomp and gnash it, and disgust your companions. Or... any other suggestions on how to display your inner self through outward actions, in the style of a character in a gothic romance?

"David Benscoter honed his craft as an investigator for the F.B.I. and the United States Treasury, cornering corrupt politicians and tax evaders."

"The lost apple trees that he hunts down now are really not so different. People and things, he said, tend to hide in plain sight if you know how and where to look. 'It’s like a crime scene,' Mr. Benscoter, 62, said as he hiked down a slope toward a long-abandoned apple orchard planted in the late 1800s.'You have to establish that the trees existed, and hope that there’s a paper trail to follow.' About two-thirds of the $4 billion apple industry is now concentrated in Washington State — and 15 varieties, led by the Red Delicious, account for about 90 percent of the market. But the past looked, and tasted, much different: An estimated 17,000 varieties were grown in North America over the centuries, and about 13,000 are lost."

From "Hunting Down the Lost Apples of the Pacific Northwest" (in the NYT).

"As varied and popular as the romantic Halloween customs were, they began to lose their hold on the American public in the early 20th century."

"Women, the traditional party hosts and targets of such games, were gaining greater agency over their lives, eroding the appeal of rituals that underscored their lack of power."

Games? Games like "snap apple":

"Healthy Justice Louis Brandeis every day ate one spinach leaf between two slices of whole wheat bread..."

"... whereas Justice Harlan Stone consumed platters of French cheeses with paired wines... Justice David Souter would eat for lunch 'just… plain… yogurt,' Ginsburg said with perfect delivery. Sotomayor added that sometimes he would have an apple, but Ginsburg maintained that the apple came later in the afternoon..... [T]he Justices eat together when one of them is celebrating a birthday; Chief Justice John Roberts will often bring a bottle of wine on those days... Ginsburg recalled the various foods hunted and prepared by their 'dear colleague,' the late Justice Antonin Scalia: fish, fowl, even 'Bambi,' she joked fondly. Sotomayor told a story in which Justice Stephen Breyer decided to serve his grandchildren pheasant, which Scalia had recently bagged. Afraid that pellets might still be in the bird, the children refused to eat it."

Link.

"The thing is... when you're called, you're called. And I hear things in my sleep..."

"... I walk around, I go in the bathroom and try to brush my teeth, and all of a sudden, the toothbrush'll start vibrating. And that's a groove, you know? And you gotta go with that. And that means drop the toothbrush and get down to the studio, or get to a bass guitar quick, you know? And I don't know, my best things just come out like that. To me, making a song is like a new girl walking in the room. You never know what's going to happen until all the things come together. And there she stands. And she says hi. You know, you want to take a bite of this orange? You bite it, it's cool, and I send it to you."


(Image originally posted here.)

A nurse said: "We all play a game called Interesting Things I Have Found in Obese People’s Rolls of Fat."

"So far I’m sitting in third with a fork, second place is an ICU nurse who found a TV remote, and the winner is an ER nurse who found a tuna fish sandwich."

Quoted in a WaPo article called "Nurses make fun of their dying patients. That’s okay," by Alexandra Robbins, who has a book called, "The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles With the Heroes of the Hospital."

Robbins says:

I learned that some units have a dedicated “butt box” for items retrieved from patients’ rectums — glass perfume bottles, an entire apple, etc. — though after Indiana nurses pulled out a G.I. Joe, the real unfortunate hero assumed pride of place in the nurses’ station.

Her point is that usually the jokes are about "situations and symptoms"...

But even when patients do become subjects of derogatory humor, we shouldn’t rush to criticize medical professionals for using it. Bioethicist Katie Watson suggests that kind of humor may result when health-care providers feel powerless to heal. “Derisive joking does the unspoken work of reframing physicians as blameless for their inability to help,” she wrote in 2011 in the Hastings Center Report....

Humor has a place in hospitals, even if it’s dark, even if it’s derogatory — as long as it isn’t cruel.... Humor is a way for nurses to empower themselves and to unite with one another, determined and defiant, against disease and injury...

... and rolls of fat.

The Fruit Formerly Known As Apple.

AND: As Meade points out in the comments, the image from the Super Bowl is more apt:



Something about the directionality of the phallic extension.

At the Red Apple Café...

... you can polish your style.

The dark side of "an apple a day keeps the doctor away."

"John Chapman died in 1845, and many of his orchards and apple varieties didn't survive much longer. During Prohibition, apple trees that produced sour, bitter apples used for cider were often chopped down by FBI agents, effectively erasing cider, along with Chapman's true history, from American life. 'Apple growers were forced to celebrate the fruit not for its intoxicating values, but for its nutritional benefits,' Means writes, 'its ability, taken once a day, to keep the doctor away...' In a way, this aphorism — so benign by modern standards—was nothing less than an attack on a typically American libation."

From a Smithsonian article titled "The Real Johnny Appleseed Brought Apples—and Booze—to the American Frontier/The apples John Chapman brought to the frontier were very different than today's apples—and they weren't meant to be eaten."

Means is Howard Means, who wrote a book called "Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story."

Lately, Meadhouse has been ciderhouse. Meade recommends:

The Johnny Appleseed of Red Oaks.

(Link to YouTube.)

BONUS: Here's the beautiful, inspirational, and surprisingly religious 1948 Disney cartoon about Johnny Appleseed:



Things to note: 1. Beautiful graphics connecting sky to land, clouds to blooming apple trees, heaven to earth, 2. Johnny is too small and scrawny to do the manly things he sees other men doing, but his innate limitation is transformed into a powerful opportunity, with unabashed American, post-war, can-do spirit, 3. An angel depicted as an old pioneer, 4. Much displaying of the Bible, 5. Subtle acknowledgment of the fact that the most valued use of the apple was for hard cider, 6. An apple used to facilitate a sexual assault (in a kissing game, not involving Johnny), and the woman's response is a straightforward, can-do slap in the face, 7. a proto-Pepe Le Pew, 8. The Indians really enjoying life with the settlers, 9. The song, which both Meade and I remember learning as children, "The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord," 10. Strong presentation of the work ethic, to the point where, when the angel returns to take Johnny to heaven, Johnny balks because he still has work planting apple trees, but the angel brings him along by telling him of the need for the planting of apples trees in heaven. That is, heaven is not rest after a lifetime of work, but an opportunity to continue working forever.

Disturbing black and yellow things.

1. Hornets on an apple (in Horicon Marsh today):



2. On the federal side of Horicon Marsh, a makeshift sign:

"No concealed weapons allowed on this property."

Posted, at a residence in my neightborhood:



Is that helpful? Should I post a "No burglary" sign? A little farther along...



... apples.

"[A]n apple and a thermos full of tea — the same sustenance Jimmy Stewart brought to the Senate floor in the movie 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'"

What Senator Mark Kirk brought to Rand Paul in the 7th hour of the filibuster.

Everything Mark Twain wanted to eat...

... when he arrived home in the United States of America after traveling around in France and Italy in 1870:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie hens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Funny about the frogs! I thought that's what they ate in France that we think is yucky.

(Via Eve Tushnet.)

ADDED: I've redone the text so it looks the way it appears in my Kindle version of 300 works of Mark Twain. It's not written in list/poem form. It still, however, says "Prairie liens, from Illinois," which Nichevo, in the comments, surmises is a misscanned Prairie hens, from Illinois. Ah, yes, here's an article about "The 'Prairie Hens' of Illinois" with the subtitle "Mark Twain’s favorite birds ... to eat." I'm going to correct the text above.

At the Apple Café...

... sometimes an apple is really an apple.