I freaking love this man...

"You know, limitations are not necessarily bad. They actually inspire creation."

"So one day I sat down here and I says this is where I want to build a house. I had absolutely no idea of what I was going to do. And I looked up there and I says oh there's the sky, there's the trees, I want that point of reference to be the beginning of the house. So I thought okay I want this curve, 'cause orientation and everything is perfect, and so then in one second that's established. Then I get up and I look up here and I says oh, I don't want that ceiling to be that high and coming this way, so I say lets bring it down to human scale, then I turn around and I say oh I want to look uphill. Twenty seconds the whole house was designed."

Many people have little idea of how actually medieval that way is, in the best and truest sense of the word. During the Era of the Collapsing Cathedrals (a truly apocalyptic time) the process was live and learn as we go. That's how the cathedrals and churches were designed and built. The actual finish of the process is quite open to any number of executions. But they started with a root measurement, which started with someone standing somewhere and saying I want this to go here, and I'll make the reference of this particular viewpoint the standard for my own private form of measurement.

This is totally accessible to anyone today to do. The medieval period wasn't some special secret code that was lost to history. Just watch the series Secrets of the Castle to find that out. They rebuilt from foundations an old castle in France using only the methods and means of the old day and age. And people are like "NOOOO is it even possible for anyone in our modernist age to restore Notre Dame Cathedral or build something like Notre Dame Cathedral NOOOOO!!!" LOL

Medlars really, seriously, are a great little fruit. I pick them after we've had a couple of light frosts. The bletted texture - it's stiff and toothy and sticky, not gooey. The taste is apple butter like, with a tiny hint of clean chalk to let you know what you're eating is not rotten but perfect. If you were to sieve out the five stones from the fruits and incorporate the mash into a cake or bread, it would be fantastic.

If any organically grown food is worth the extra cost, it is apples. Or if you can find a farm/orchard that grows them using just the dormant sulphur/oil spray that is fine too.

A sincere injunction. Even if you are not into buying organic stuff and don't even go for fruits or vegetables. Make cleanly grown apples a part of your daily diet.

When you eat the apple - at least one a day - make especially sure to eat the seeds - the entire apple core. But make sure you chew the seeds before swallowing them, otherwise they will just pass through your system.

Do not pay attention to the idiotic parrots on the internet who mindlessly blabber about how apple seeds "contain cyanide" - LOL - and therefore should be avoided.

Let's repeat: eat organically grown apples everyday. Eat the seeds in the apple, chewing them well. Tell anyone who says to you "Oh, apple seeds contain cyanide" to eff off.

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Also tell that to people who say, "Oh, figs have worms". People are so stupid. Any fruit that has gone overripe can and may likely have the larva of the fruit fly in it. This is especially true of overripe cherries and blackberries. You will know when a fruit is overripe, past its prime.

In fact, there is a smell the fruit will have that will tell you it has SWD - Spotted Wing Drosophila. And by the way, as an aside, while no one wants to eat the fruit fly larva, ultimately it really is only protein. It will not breed inside you. In other words, it will not "give you worms".

You want to know how this bullshit started with the fig? It's not because they have worms. In fact, they are less likely to have the fruit fly larva than other fruits. You want to know what happened? Some dumb schmoe opened up a spoiled fig that naturally had the fruit fly larva, and what did he see that sparked his imagination? Ever look at the inside of a fresh fig? The whole inside bears a certain resemblance to worms. (Though really to anyone who is more diligent and clear in his imagination the inside of the fig bears a certain fertile representation of sperms making their way to some nucleus.) Thus was born the whole stupid parrot fest about figs containing worms.

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"Oh, you shouldn't plant bee-loving plants where children are going to be playing." LOL. People parrot this ignorant bullshit as though having plants that bees love near where children are going to be playing is the same as putting hives of bees and wasps there. Bees are never more safe to be around as when they are foraging nectar and pollen from blossoms. A single stray bee is more dangerous than an entire host that is busy at work on some flowering plant. And a host of bees busy on some flowering plant does not make for any strays, because they have found flowers, and are therefore occupied.

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"Oh, putting coffee grounds into the soil will turn it acidic" - LOL. "Oh, you shouldn't bury meat or bones with your scraps in the garden" - LOL. "Oh, drinking raw milk will make you sick" - LOL. "Oh, the police in helicopters will descend on your garden if you grow opium poppies" - LOL.

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"Oh, wild pigs are rapidly multiplying in Canada - they're taking over!" - LOL.

I'm all for that. Sounds like lots of free food to me, and delicious food, thanks to Global Warming. If they become that invasive the government can simply say, "Go out and kill. Take and eat."

But I can imagine the Pork Industry wouldn't like that very much. They would spawn a whole lot of official-sounding bullshit on the public about how wild pigs contain cyanide and worms and will eat children and the cops will come and get you and shit.

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"Oh, this plant is seeding itself all over the garden - it's invasive!" - LOL.

Listen, I'm from the Pacific Northwest where the temperate rainforest climate is very conducive for invasive species, both flora and fauna. I know invasive. A plant seeding itself - or even aggressively seeding itself - does not make it invasive, alright? Be happy, and thankful, that you don't have to deal with horsetail, creeping buttercup, Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, Japanese knotweed, et alia - yes.

Be happy. And eat apples and the apple seeds.

The dried ones too

The dried Kalamatas are nice and chewy and have figgy depth. They soften nicely in the cream.

Having the dried figs in cream is a substitute for the absentee fresh ones that I grow on the - thus far - five trees. They give tons of figs, and I'm a big dumb weakling when it comes to giving them away. I like doing that - that is, to people who actually like them. Still, I keep a ton in the freezer, but they don't last long. They all get consumed by about - what is it - the end of October? But at some point in winter, their memory begins to haunt me, and I resort to store-bought dried figs.

The dried ones with viable seeds are a completely different fig from the fresh. I like the fresh best.

At the same "farmer's market" store down from where I live that I buy the dried figs, they had "fresh" figs one time - from Brazil - and I bought two just to see how they compare with the ones I grow.

I must tell about those figs from Brazil. They were so insipid it was like eating snot. If that is people's experience of figs, then no wonder people say they're not fans. Not that I was surprised, though it did make me happy to know that the figs from the trees I grow are so superior in sweetness, flavour, texture, etc. that there is simply no comparing. I'm not tooting my own horn - I don't "grow" them - the trees grow them with the aid of light and water and heat and such. I merely tend. And talk to them.

I understand that they pick the figs before they have properly ripened, and figs do not ripen off the tree. All for the sake of shelf life, and shipping life. I'm guessing that they also "force" the figs by over-watering to make them super plump, which waters down the flavour (kind of like anti-Francis Super Catholics ginning up the culture of appearances). Picking figs before they have ripened is a crime. I committed this offense so many times - picking some of the first ripening figs too early - that it was only by having my own stupidity shoved in my face after something like the fourth year that I began to learn the art of long-drawn detachment that fig trees demand.

Did you know that someone under a fig tree is a symbol of prayer?

The best apple I have ever eaten

Or the best apple I ever ate.

Both sentences are legitimate and perfectly viable English grammar. The only arguable part is the word "ever". For it may not be "ever". We need to cut back on "ever". (Just like we need to cut back on "beyond".) Only if I died tomorrow would the sentence be true with "ever", for tomorrow - and tomorrow, and tomorrow - I could, and hope to, eat an apple yet that will take the title "best".

For there are many apples, and many apples I have not eaten or ate (I love how you southerners say ate instead of eaten - it's perfectly excellent grammar). I'm just a newbie when it comes to knowing the tastes and textures of the vast array of apples. And further, apples do not differ from each other in the way that - say, mangoes differ from each other. Certain apples can take on such a distinctive profile as to induce this commonly known phrase among pomologists: "If you were to eat this blindfolded, you would not know that it was an apple." For this reason you would not be far amiss to say that apples are the most universal fruit.

The two apples in the picture are not, and yet are, the apple I am referring to when I say, "The best apple I have ever eaten." For those are apples from the tree from which I had the best apple I ever ate, but neither of them are the apple. That picture was taken 2015. The best apple I ever ate was one from the same tree only last year, 2017.

I do not know the variety of this apple tree. It grows by a horse trail. The two apples in my hand were picked, and just under ripe. No matter. When they are not quite peaked in ripeness they are intense. Have one and your mouth goes raw. Have two and your stomach lining is in a questionable state. Of course I ate both, one after the other, for they are complex - intensely sweet and intensely...sour? I don't like using the word sour in this case, because sour too often refers to something that has spoiled, like sour milk. Anyways, the rawnesss of both mouth and stomach didn't last long - it's no matter to me. Many wimps today with overly domesticated palettes would not be able to get past one bite.

But when they ripen to full peak - now that is what I'm getting at here. The best apple I ever ate had fallen from the tree. It was lying by the trail in dusty grass, just a few feet away from a pile of horse dung. I wiped the dust off the best I could on my shirt and took a bite.

I wouldn't know how to describe it. Champagne? But I'm not a fan of champagne. I don't know. It was amazing. Just in case you might be thinking, "Ah, Paul, the apple was starting to ferment" - no, it wasn't. It was perfectly ripe, nowhere near overripe. The burst of sharp intensity, the warmth of it - not just the warmth of the apple basking in the sun, but the warmth of the flavour. It was a taste that completely filled the mouth, exuberant, superabundant.

The knowledge that we have of apples according to what we get from the supermarkets is impoverished, to say the least.

Just like our notion of heaven.

Hurray!

Julie and Nigel have some new apple tasting videos!

Here's episode 4:




LOL @ 15:38


Go to Growing with Julie to watch more.

Cox's Orange Pippin

Beautiful russeting on left middle one.

They are praised for being a very well-balanced apple in flavour. They are so well-balanced that one can easily overlook them and say what's the big deal. But the flavour is there.

You might think that someone saying they have mango notes is waxing a little too poetical, but it's true when you pay attention, and don't just eat them like a pig. There are indeed mango notes, among others. And to eat one that has been warming on the branch in the sun is apple heaven.

I find they are also well-balanced in texture. Hard to describe, as with flavour. Certainly crisp, but with more than just the same old same old crisp that one gets tired of; something slightly giving, but not soft...something bread-like, but not chewy; not mealy at all. Dense but sprightly; real good apple meat, but not a work-out for your jaw bone. Juicy and ever so slightly starchy.

Uncle Corky

Uncle Corky!

Uncle Corky!

Pehuén!

Cornus Kousa!

Grows well in PNW as in other places. Collected for seed. Easy to grow from seed. Fruit is sweet and mild. Has to be fully ripe. Looks like martian eggs.

Cox's Orange Pippin

The Perfect Asian Pear

Forget those pallid things you see at the grocery stores, those watery fruits in their mesh nets. If that is what you know as "Asian pear" then you have not had an Asian pear.

An Asian pear, like the one pictured above, blushing through its tan, is like a fine wine. It can even be "too much" for some people, with its depths and its aromas.

I've been watching that one in the picture slowly turning colour through the summer, along with all its fellow pears. One load proved too heavy for a branch and tore it off before their prime (to much weeping).

I do not know what variety the one pictured is, but as good as it is, I'm aware that there are even better kinds - the russet varieties. As with apples, russet varieties take the cake - always take the cake, away from those sparkling polished professional perfections you see at the grocery stores.

Uncle Corky

Figs, and especially white figs, really do have a peak point at which they must be picked. The fat one sagging there on the tree (and consequently on the plate) was yet too early, in spite of its being squishy and somewhat translucent. 

The fig at its picking point must not be defying gravity at all. It must be fully drooping with its own weight. The one in the picture, while drooping heavily, was still fighting gravity somewhat, and its skin was not starting to break. It tasted mediocre; not nearly what it should be. I knew as soon as I broke into the skin with my fingers that it wasn't going to taste great because you could see areas between the pulp and the skin that were still "cottony".

As Tom at Tall Clover Farm has remarked, a single day can mean the difference between biting into gobsmacking juiciness and biting into a mealy cotton ball.

Aloha III!

Aloha II!

Aloha!

Monkey Puzzle IV!

Those three different sprouts between the monkey puzzle seeds in the last two pictures are apple seeds.

Oh, and Urban Huntress has a great post on monkey puzzle nuts/seeds, replete with an interesting recipe.

Monkey Puzzle III!

And I found more:

In fact, there were so many that I decided to leave some for the squirrels.



Snug: