Adam's Apples

Granny blushes, if you let her.  ¶  You would not know it from prowling the supermarket, however: She is a late apple usually picked too soon.  ¶  Today I will assay one from a local orchard. It was, maybe, allowed to ripen fully, though I am eating it more than a month after it was picked (and publishing this account even later than that, sorry!).

I begin 2026 with a refrigerator full of apples, and a number of half-finished blog posts and ideas from 2025. Several things, including some delightful travel, kept me away from this blog this fall.  ¶  Photo:  A Bramley's Seedling takes in the view from the walls of Edinburgh Castle.

I've reviewed Sunrise Magic, but want to share a second tasting of some that I found for sale at a fruit stand in Seattle. (And not just because they are worth choosing .)  ¶  Most of the nation's Sunrise Magic crop grows in Washington, where it was bred by Washington State University. (WSU also created Cosmic Crisp.)  ¶  It's always worth trying food grown in its native turf.

Apple cultivars are, literally, identical clones. Yet they can look very different depending on ripeness, growing conditions, and so forth.  ¶  On that score, I have never before seen Ashmeads Kernels like these.  ¶  Yet there they were, in a basket in a supermarket in Seattle on Halloween.

The apple trees are sleeping at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts.

The last outdoor market of the year spread its tattered wings under unseasonably warm skies on Wednesday, the day before the American Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.  ¶  The market in Davis Square, Somerville, here in Massachusetts encamps on Wednesdays from June to November.  ¶  Thus it is ever fated to be among the very last, holding forth up to and including the day before every Thanksgiving.