Seedlings

Our computer has been acting up and is being repaired, so this post is from an Ipod touch. I don't know how to load pictures from my camera to this device, so no pictures today.

Those seedlings I started last week are now sprouting. I would say that over 3/4 of them are already up. When I planted those I also planted some apple seeds and lemon seeds. I know that these will not come true to seed, but I had them so why not. While reading Botany of Desire I learned that most apples before prohibition were bitter and used to make hard apple cider. Also all cider then would have been hard. The sweet stuff only came along when refrigeration was invented. It also told of the real John Appleseed Chapman, and how he planted orchards of seedlings on the froniter to sell to the setelers. There was a requirement to plant 50 either apple or pear trees in the homestead laws to keep profiteers from claiming lots of ladn then reselling it. Now there were sweet named varieties, but they cost a good bit. You could buy 50 no name varietys from Appleseed for the price of a handfull of named ones. Since all 5, usually, seeds of an apple will produce 5 diffrent trees genetically appleseed's trees led to there being over 17,000 named varietys, mostly regional, in the late 1800's. Now most of us can only name a dozen if we try and the Grannysmith is the only non sweet one. So I have started saving my seeds from fruit and planting them. Many will die, or at least not prosper, but because of genetic diversity a few will thrive. It may take them a long time to fruit, but if they do, I will make apple cider and apple cider vinegar. Then there is also applejack. Setelers learned that if their cider was frozen to -30 in the winter that the water would freeze and what was left would be apple brandy.

If all else fails apples are beautiful trees. I can enjoy their beauty in my yard and when I prune them I can use the wood in my BBQ smoker.

P.s. My mouth is healing nicely. The day of the surgery was not great, but since then it has been steadily improveing. I am not even using over the counter pain meds now on my sixth day after the surgery.