Suzie's Musings: Morning Folks 10 23 05

It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What plant we in this apple tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May-wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple tree. William Cullen Bryant

There were apples painted in pale green and bright red on a ground of emerald green leaves. It is all colour. One might say it was a Cezanne. Maurice Denis

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. George Bernard Shaw

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan

Nor is it every apple I desire,

Nor that which pleases every palate best;

'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,

Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,

Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,

Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:

No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of life!
- Henry David Thoreau

After Apple-Picking
By Robert Frost
1874-1963

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Great poem, this particular Frost. Although it so well describes the literal apple season, he also writes bout a dying man. A really beautiful poem.

Amazing how this common and prolific fruit has inspired artists and writers from ancient times right up to today. From Bible stories to American Folklore, the Apple pops up everywhere. Johnny Appleseed (Chapman) did a good job of marketing after the scandal of Eden threatened to ruin the market. Where would we be today if Eve had never tempted Adam? Can you imagine a world without Apple Pie. Me either!