Asakiyume mita

I brag from time to time here and elsewhere about the big apple tree in our yard, which we grew from a seed and which blesses us with tasty apples--even though there's no reason that should be the case: apples don't grow true to seed, so if you grow an apple tree from a seed, there's no telling what you'll get. I don't remember what kind of apple's seed I planted. But it grew into a three-trunked tree that towers over us now. And deer come and eat the windfalls.

Today wakanomori and I collected as many apples as we could reach for our own use.



I won't have time to make any pies in the next few days, because the ninja girl is coming for a visit from Japan , and the ninja girl heartily detests apples. So I just processed a whole bunch of them (peeled them, cut out bad bits, sliced them) and froze them for later. They were so warm to the touch! They felt extra alive--like they were still out in the sun. Made me want to just hold them, or rub them against my cheek.

They just grow, all on their own, without any chemical inputs from me--with no inputs from me whatsoever, except for words of extravagant praise and love from time to time.

But look how beautiful they can be: this apple was especially beautiful. It had two very different face, like the apple Snow White bit into:

You know when you photocopy something from a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy--you know how generations down from the master, the results get a little weird-looking? The image or text is shrunken, and bits have somehow ceased to transfer, and other bits get blobby, and maybe the whole thing is streaked or gray, or misaligned now? That's what my mind-on-pandemic-and-Trump feels like. In an effort to get back to the master copy, I've been doing things like ....

New chalk drawing! I copied the seal of New England Central Railroad, the freight line whose tracks I interact with all the time. NECR's storied history extends back to the distant year of 1995, when the former Central Vermont Railway got a name change after being sold by CN (Canadian National Railway) to RailTex, a transportation holding company specializing in short lines that five years later was itself sold and became part of RailAmerica--another transportation holding company specializing in short lines. (Thank you, Wikipedia!) (Now it's owned by Genesee & Wyoming, another short-line freight company .... Thank you, NECR website.)

Here is the seal:



And here is the chalk drawing:



... It is on the concrete by one of the places where NECR rests sidelined cars. A sign declares the town:



Sidelined cars, carrying "forest products"




Other things I've been doing include collecting Concord grapes from where they spill over the chainlink fence around the supermarket parking lot ...



And doing portraits of the apples from our apple tree ...

Everything smells beautiful right now, and the landscape is so many different colors; leaf hasn't subsided to leaf yet, and blossoms are everywhere.

My apple tree has never been so graced with flowers before:

Here is a road I walk every day. This photo is from yesterday, but this morning, when I passed this way, an oriole flew into an apple tree (not visible in this picture) and seemed to be sniffing the blossoms. Maybe it was sipping nectar. Maybe it was nibbling the petals. Maybe it was listening to whispered secrets--I don't know.



These are not the apple blossoms that the oriole was getting intimate with, but these are apple blossoms I especially love, because they're on a tree I grew from a seed.



Beautiful May ♥