Here are the sticks in my collection.

Here are the sticks in my collection.  Most were made in the UK but the dark horned one was made by Tom Shrontz in Ohio from my first ram's horn and the tall staff without horn, I made when I was 16 of local ash.

1813 Shearer with his Crook

Iron Crooks from the Blacksmiths Forge.

The iron crooks were forged by blacksmiths.  You can still buy a aluminum version from livestock supply companies in the US.  I once saw a nice iron one forged from an old shot gun barrel.  Some leg crooks of iron were on very long poles and could be used to reach out from a distance and select a sheep from the flock.

Shepherd with his iron crook

More on Shepherds Crooks

The shepherd's crook or Cromach that has the horn head is a Scottish invention. The English shepherd traditionally used an iron leg crook like this one pictured. The horn crook has now supplanted the iron crook in the UK and the US.

The Corncrake

I woke up this morning with this song running through my heid!  It won't stop it has been there all day and into the night so I cued up the tune on the computer and am enjoying it again. I learned of this song from an old recording of a rather obscure Band called Kentigern.  I understand Andy M. Stewart recorded it as well.  It's so lovely I wish I could present the tune here. The Corncrake is a very interesting bird that like to inhabits grain fields in Scotland.

The lass that I loo'ed first of all
Was handsome young and fair
Wi' her I spent some happy nichts
Alang the banks o' Ayr
Wi' her I spent some happy nichts
Whaur yon wee burnie rows
Whaur the echo mocks the corncrake
Amongst the Whinny Knowes

We loved each other dearly
Disputes we seldom had
As constant as the pendulum
Her heart beat always glad
We sought for love and found it
Whaur yon wee burnie rows
Whaur the echo mocks the corncrake
Amongst the Whinny Knowes

Ye maidens fair and pleasure dames
Come fae the banks o' Doon
Ye dearly pay for every scent
To the barbers for perfume
But rural joy is free for a'
Whaur the scented clover grows
Whaur the echo mocks the corncrake
Amongst the Whinny Knowes

The corncrake is noo awa'
The burn is tae the brim
The Whinny Knowes are cled wi' snaw
That taps the highest whin
But when cauld winter is awa'
And summer clears the sky
We'll welcome back the corncrake
The bird o' rural joy

My Brother and I , with our Sticks!

This is a photo taken in Scotland after my Brother and I bought sticks at the Royal Highland Show in 2005

Working Horn at the Royal Highland

Here is a gent at the Royal Highland Show in 2005.  He is working horn with a heat gun in the stall of the Scottish Crookmakers Ass.

A Dapper Farmer

Here is a dapper farmer at the Royal Highland Show in Scotland in 2005.  Note his intersting crook with a hole in the horn.  

This is a photo I took in 2005

Click on Photo to Enlarge

This is a photo I took at the Royal Highland Show in Scotland in 2005.  It is a wonderful display by the Scottish Crookmakers Association which was doing demonstrations on making crooks there in a stall.

I see now they have a website so here is the link:
http://www.onlineborders.org.uk/site/microsites/scm/home/page/index_html

Sheep Crook and Black Dog

Here's me black dog here's me sheep crook I'll will give unto you
Here's me bag and me budget I will bid 'em all adieu
Here's me black dog and me sheep crook I'll will leave 'em all behind
Since Flora my laurel you've proved so unkind


I'll lay o'er the green branches although I am young
How dearly I loved my love how sweetly she sang
Was there ever a young man in such a sorry state
As me with my Flora my laurel of late

All to my dear Flora these words I did say
Tomorrow we'll be married love tomorrow is our day
Oh no dearest William my age it is too young
One day to our wedding is one day too soon

For I'll go into service if the day ain't too late
I'll be apprenticed to a fine lady it is my intent
And when into service for a year or two bound
It's then we'll get married love and I'll settle down

But a little while after a letter was wrote
All a-saying that Flora had changed her mind
And she said that she lived such a contrary life
She'd never be she couldn't ever be a young shepherd's wife

Here's me black dog here's me sheep crook I'll will give unto you
Here's me bag and me budget I will bid 'em all adieu
Here's me black dog and me sheep crook I'll will leave 'em all behind
Since Flora my laurel you've proved so unkind

This song was collected by Sam Henry “in north Co. Derry, although it is now probably better known in southern English versions. Lucy Broadwood printed a Surrey set in English Country Songs and more recently it has been recorded from a West Country traveller, the late Queen Caroline Hughes. It also crossed the Atlantic and has been found in Newfoundland (as Floro) and in Novia Scotia.”  Recordings known to me are as follows:

Steeleye Span, Below the Salt, Irish day labourer Eddie Butcher singing Flora on the Free Reed album I Once Was a Daysman, Norma Waterson's Sheep Crook and Black Dog on her album Bright Shiny Morning and to Brian Peters' version on his album Sharper Than the Thorn. Also this song was recorded by Ewan MacColl on his album The Real MacColl.

Road to the Isles

This Photo I took of my crummack while on Hirta in Saint Kilda last August.  It is an antique given to me by my dear friend Keith Campbell. Please click on the image to enlarge?


The far Cuillins are pullin' me away,

As take I wi' my crummack to the road.
The far Cuillins are puttin' love on me,
As step I wi' the sunlight for my load.

Chorus:
Sure by Tummel and Loch Rannoch and Lochaber I will go
By heather tracks wi' heaven in their wiles.
If it's thinkin' in your inner heart, the braggart's in my step,
You've never smelled the tangle o' the Isles.
Oh the far Cuillins are puttin' love on me,
As step I wi' my crummack to the Isles.

It's by Shiel water the track is to the west,
By Aillort and by Morar to the sea.
The cool cresses I am thinkin' of for pluck,
And bracken for a wink on Mother's knee.

Chorus:

The blue islands are pullin' me away,
Their laughter puts the leap upon the lame;
The blue islands from the Skerries to the Lews,
Wi' heather honey taste upon each name.

Chorus:

Meaning of unusual words:
Cuillins=mountains in the island of Skye
crummack=shepherd's crook


Music: Marjory Kennedy-Fraser
Lyrics: Kenneth MacLeod
1917

Below are some photos about carving a crook.

Here are pictured some sticks photographed at the Scottish Blackface Shearing competition in 2006 at Loch Earn.  The Black ones are made of Buffalo Horn. Besides the shearing there was a contest of crook making and these are a few of the winners in their class. Below I have posted photos that show some of the stages of carving of a shepherds crook.

http://www.ramshornstudio.com/shearing_contest.htm



Lochearnhead Shears was established in 1993, and over the years it has become one of the larger sheep shearing competitions in the United Kingdom. Sheep shearers from all over the World compete to take home the “Scottish Blackface Shearing Champion” title. Blackface sheep are predominant in this area and require extra skills from the competitors to overcome their flighty nature and the coarser wool of this mountain breed.

http://www.lochearnheadshears.org/

A Horn

The photos below are from Wren Country Sticks and used with their permission.
http://www.wrencountrysticks.co.uk/

The Drawing on a Rough Horn

Here is the border collie carving first sketched on the raw horn.

The Roughed out Carving

A close up of the Carving

A Finished Crook

Making a Shepherd's Crook

One of the unique pleasures I have enjoyed with my blog is I get emails from very interesting people from around the world. I recently stuck up a conversation on shepherds crooks with a very pleasant gentleman from England. He excepted my request to write a little piece to share with you all on this blog. I have a collection of horn sticks and they are truly a work of art. They require quite a bit of skill and some hard to find materials so you don't run into a good stick maker every day. I hope you enjoy this information as much as I do. It's a real treat to view his website so I have provided a link to it as well. The following is the interesting notes on crook making Joe sent for me to post:

The shepherds crook. Cromach, Cruca, or Hyrdestav. Whatever you call it, it has been assisting shepherds and herders for many years. Originally a working tool, indispensable in removing a beast from pen or bog, it has become an icon of the shepherd and the sheepdog trialer.

Once a rough shaped bough with either a horn hook fitted or a hook cut direct from a branch with supporting stick or shank. It has become an art form which I am pleased to say I am part of.

The shepherds crook and its cousin the country walking stick have long enjoyed a place at most country fairs and shows within the UK, where stick makers would bring their creations and compete in a stick dressing competition placing their sticks in classes reflecting the different styles of crook or walking stick .

What was once a past time for the country man, has now become a very popular hobby in the UK and is spreading rapidly around the world. Notably in America.

It was at such a country show many years ago that I came across a stick dressers competition. I was struck by the beauty of the crooks before me. Not only were they hand made, of natural materials such as rams horn and hazel, but were functional items which I could use when out walking the fells.

My aim was to own one of these fine crooks, but owning was not enough for me, I had to make one.

There was my first mistake, believing that such a thing of beauty could be made by me. In my arrogance I could see no reason while I could not fashion a crook. Nature had never raised such a foolish child as me.

At the time there were few if any books on shepherds crooks and almost none showing the method of manufacture. Those that were available were sorely lacking in detail.

With time I discovered a group of stick makers who organised the very competitions I had been visiting and my education started.

It continues to this day. Although I now make shepherds crooks on a professional basis, the horn is my daily teacher and no rams horn is ever the same as the previous horn I have worked.

A traditional shepherds crook can take a number of forms. Firstly, the plain crook. With no decoration or carving to distract the eye. This crook has to be perfect to win at competition.

Secondly the decorated crook. This may take the form of painted scenes on the side of the crook head, or a carving of traditionally a border collie. Any manner of things may be carved on a crook, such as a Thistle for Scotland. Sheep, birds, fish and even people are carved on crook noses ( the curve at the front of the crook).

The traditional material for the crook head would be a rams horn, never a ewe horn which would be too small and thin. Buffalo horn from Asia is now being used in increasing quantities as rams horn becomes more difficult to find. In the UK, sheep are being taken of the fells and lowland breeds are starting to dominate. Breeds such as the Texel.

The wood used for the stick or shank would almost always the hazel. Hazel offers a light and strong stick, and a variety of bark colours which are highly prized by the competing stick maker. Slow growing hazel cut on high rocky ground generally make the best shanks, the slow growth ensures a tight grain and the best colours come from the rocky terrain.

The process of making a shepherds crook is a long and lengthy one. The main ingredients are of course the rams horn, plenty of heat and pressure.

The whole process starts with the boiling of the selected horn, after a couple of hours of boiling the horn is placed in a flat steel press and flattened. This is to take out the curl in the horn and to start the process of compression. Most rams horn, especially the larger hill breeds such as the Scottish Blackface have bulky horns, ( the welsh mountain have nice dinky horns which do not need a lot of work, but are not big enough to be carved) Within the horn resides a central white material which is not horn and should it be exposed will not polish. So the horn is compressed together with its core. This will result in some cases a almost translucent horn in parts.

After flattening, the horn goes through a further series of compression which results in a more circular cross section across the horn. At this stage the horn resembles a horse shoe more than the original horn. Heat is constantly applied during the compression stages and used throughout the whole of the shaping process.

To begin the final shaping, with the aid of heat once more the head end of the horn is now pressed between two steel channels, which straightens part of the horn and forms the neck ( the section arising from the hazel shank).

Further heating softens the horn so that it may now be forced around a wood former to give the basic crook shape.

The horn is left to cool and set and after hour or five hours removed from the former for the nose to worked upon.

To achieve the traditional curl at the bottom of a crook, a pair of grips is used and after sufficient heat has been applied to the nose area the grips force the horn over to form the curl. Once more the horn is set aside to cool, before further work can take place.

At this stage the horn is ready for a lot of rasping and filing. A hole is drilled in the end of the neck and a peg carved on the end of the hazel shank, both should fit snugly. Glued together, you now have your crook.

The time taken to achieve a finished crook can vary greatly depending on what you are doing to the crook, but at least ten hours is needed to finish a crook and a lot more if you decide to carve the nose with a dog.

This is only a very quick resume of making a crook. Every horn is different and requires to be treated as such, so you are constantly learning to accommodate the horn.

Welsh Mountain sheep have been mentioned and these sheep produce much smaller horns than the larger hill breeds and take a lot less work, especially in the finishing stages because there is simply not that much horn to file off. So certain publications which show a crook being made and use the Welsh Mountain horn in the process do not mention the fact that you are more likely to be buying a horn from a larger breed and the work involved in working this horn is going to be more demanding.

In the end no matter what horn you use it will always have the last say.


http://www.wrencountrysticks.co.uk/

Our Jewelry

Here is the video I have been working on of our Jewelry.  I just finished it and posted it on You Tube tonight.

The Flowers by Robert Louis Stevenson

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings, Tiny trees for tiny dames-- These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.


Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-1894

Green grow the lilacs, an American Cowboy Song

Green grow the lilacs, all sparkling with dew
I'm lonely, my darling, since parting with you;
But by our next meeting I'll hope to prove true
And change the green lilacs to the Red, White and Blue.

Green grow the lilacs reminding me of
The ones that I brought you with all of my love,
The gates of my country will open for you
And change the green lilacs to the Red, White and Blue.

Green grow the lilacs, Your favorite flow'r,
So sweetly perfuming - a sad parting hour.
Oh send me a message - That you love me too,
Let's change the green lilacs to the Red, White and Blue.

Repeat first verse.

This song was adapted from the Scottish Song below by American Cowboys using the same tune.

Green Grow the Laurels

I once had a sweetheart but now I have none
He's gone and he's left me, to weep and to mourn;
He's gone and he's left me, for others to see
But I'll soon find another, far better than he

cho: Green grows the laurel, soft falls the dew
Sorry was I, love, parting from you
But at our next meeting I hope you'll prove true
And we'll join the green laurel and the violet so blue.

He passes my window both early and late
And the looks he gives at me would me my heart break;
The looks he gives at me a thousand would kill
Though he hates and detests me, I love that lad still.

I wrote him a letter in red rosy lines
He wrote back an answer all twisted and twined
Saying: Keep your love-letters and I will keep mine,
You write to your love and I'll write to mine.

Now I oft'times do wonder why maidens love men
And oft'times I wonder why young men love them
But from my own knowledge I will have you to know
That the men are deceivers wherever they go.

From Folksongs of Britain and Ireland, Kennedy
Collected from Robert Cinnamond, N. Ireland, 1955



GREEN GROWS THE LAUREL

Green grows the laurel and fresh falls the dew
Sorry am I since I parted with you
Sorry am I since I parted with you
And we'll change the green laurel for the bonnets so blue

I can love little or I can love long
I can love a new love when the old love is gone
I only said I loved him to give his heart ease
Now his back is to me, I'll love who I please.

Often have I wondered why women love men
And then I've wondered what makes men love them
This is a mystery, but one thing I know
The men they are deceivers, wherever they go

This version comes from North Carolina

The Lilacs Mother Planted

 
I listened by the doorstep as the evening shadows
fell,
While from the distance floated the faint tinklings
of a bell,
The night hawk circled overhead then dropped
straight down below,
The same as when I first lived there, in childhood,
long ago.
The trees have grown much taller in the yard
where once I played,
And now looked so majestic in their summer robes
arrayed;
And near the walk the lilacs flung their fragrance
to the air
The lilacs that my darling mother planted for us
there.
Ah, yes, what tender memories are forced on us
again,
Who leave our home in boyhood days and then
return grown men;
To seek again the playgrounds which in youth
we loved so well,
The shade beneath the apple tree, the old pump
at the well,
The woodpile, and the cellar door, the dear old
blacksmith shop,
The granary that held the corn with martin box
on top.
But dearer than the playgrounds was the perfume
in the air,
From those dear lilac bushes that my mother
planted there.
Oh, sweet and fragrant lilac, the one she loved so
well,
Thy fragrance brings to memory sad thoughts I
cannot tell;
Sweet lullabies of childhood sung at the evening
rest,
By mother clasping closely the one she loved the
best.
A voice that gently whispered sweet words of
love to me,
A face so kind and gentle, a heart with love so free;
Still yet my heart throbs feel them, still yet I see
them there,
When lilacs that she planted with fragrance fill
the air.

-Ed Blair.

Lilacs in a Window, by Mary Cassatt

Lilacs in a Window, by Mary Cassatt

Lilacs, a poem by Amy Lowell

Lilac Bush by Vincent van Gogh


Lilacs,
False blue,
White
Purple,
Colour of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.
You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dish pan was of silver.
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses--
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting."
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night,
So many verses before bed-time,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night-time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of the elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where everyone walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.


Lilacs,
False blue,
White
Purple,
Colour of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jewelled Pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.


Maine knows you,
Has for years and years;
New Hampshire knows you,
And Massachusetts
And Vermont.
Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;
Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.
You are brighter than apples,
Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,
You are the smell of all Summers,
The love of wives and children,
The recollection of the gardens of little children,
You are the State Houses and Charters
And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.
May is lilac here in New England,
May is a thrush singing "Sun up!" on a tip-top ash-tree,
May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South wind.
May is full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay.


Lilacs,
False blue,
White
Purple,
Colour of lilac.
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilacs in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.

-Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925)
 "Lilacs" was published in What's O'Clock (1925),
a collection that won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1926, after Amy's death.

Some Lilac History

Here from the gardeners network is some lilac history.  Lilacs in the United States date back to the mid 1750's. They were grown in America's first botanical gardens and were popular in New England. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew them in their gardens. Lilac bushes can live for hundreds of years, so a bush planted at that time may still be around. Lilacs originated from Europe and Asia, with the majority of natural varieties coming from Asia. In Europe, lilacs came from the Balkans, France and Turkey.


Where is the Lilac Capital of the World? Many areas grow them and many have a wide variety in large numbers. But Rochester, N.Y. undoubtedly is the Lilac Capital of the World. It's love for Lilacs dates back to 1892 when Highland Park horticulturalist John Dunbar planted 20 varieties on the sunny southern slopes of the park. Highland Park in Rochester is the scene of an annual, two week long Lilac Festival ,with over a half a million people attending the event each year. This park has over 500 varieties of lilacs and more than 1200 lilac bushes in the parks' 155 acres.

In addition, many homes and parks in the Rochester area have one or more lilac bushes. If you take a ride along many of the Finger Lakes, you will find thousands of them along the roadside and the sweet smell will come right through your open window.


A Stately Bush: On August 18, 2006, New York State Governor George Pataki proclaimed the Lilac as the State bush.

For more good information follow the link to the Gardener's Network:
http://www.gardenersnet.com/lilac.htm

Warble for Lilac-Time

Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)
Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,
Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)
Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,
Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings,
The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,
All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,
The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,
The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate,
The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,
For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it?
Thou, soul, unloosen'd--the restlessness after I know not what;
Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!
O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!
To glide with thee O soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters;
Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew,
The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,
Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,
Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,
To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds,
A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.

By Walt Whitman
1819-1892

Lilacs Now in the Door Yard Blooming...

The lilacs are in bloom and they are as splendid as the apple blossoms.  What a wonderful spring for flowers this has been thus far!  My Mother has a dark purple bush that is just grand right now.  My lighter purple one is looking very good but a few days behind those down by the lake shore.


How fair it stood, with purple tassels hung,
Their hue more tender than the tint of Tyre ;
How musical amid their fragrance rung
The bee's bassoon, keynote of spring's glad choir !
O languorous Lilac ! still in time's despite
I see thy plumy branches all alight
With new-born butterflies which loved to stay
And bask and banquet in the temperate ray
Of springtime, ere the torrid heats should be :
For these dear memories, though the world grow gray,
I sing thy sweetness, lovely Lilac tree ! "

by Elizabeth Akers.(1832–1911)

New York Times headline...

Seeking a Few Good Shepherds

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18sheep.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin


Children everywhere love prizes and fuzzy animals, right? The North Dakota shepherding industry is counting on it.
Jay Pickthorn/Forum

A program in North Dakota offers “starter flocks” to revive the state’s sheep industry.

In an unusual move meant to encourage youthful interest in a career field that could perhaps use a little of-the-moment excitement, a state group will be awarding sheep to select teens and ’tweens. They hope to encourage a new generation of shepherds.

Shepherding, always popular among storybook characters and as a religious metaphor, has taken a beating in reality. Nationally, tens of thousands of sheep ranches have disappeared in recent decades. And in mostly rural North Dakota, there are just 840 operations now, a drop of about 1,000 sites tending to lambs, ewes and rams since the late 1980s. Livestock specialists say that fewer people seem to have the patience or expertise to handle flocks, and that there are concerns about the ease of marketing and slaughter.

For more check out the link

Spring by Alphonse Mucha

Living Prayer by RON BLOCK

In this world I walk alone
with no place to call my home
But there’s One who holds my hand
on the rugged road through barren lands

The way is dark, the road is steep
but He’s become my eyes to see
Strength to climb, my grief to bear
the Savior lives inside me there

In Your love I find release,
a haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
a living prayer, my God to Thee

Through these trials of life I find
another voice inside my mind
It comforts me and bids me live
inside the love the Father gives

In Your love I find release,
a haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
a living prayer, my God to Thee

Take my life and let me be
a living prayer, my God to Thee

Alison Krauss & Union Station recorded this its so moving

Wrong Person?

I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful. I'll be the first to admit that it's possible that you did marry the wrong person. However, if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. On the other hand, if you marry the right person, and treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person. I also know that it is far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you.
-Zig Ziglar

Lucas Cranach

Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1472-1553)

Love and Marriage

"We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited."

-Alfred Adler

"There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends."

-Homer

Bumble bee video on apple blossoms

http://www.youtube.com/user/stephenhayesuk

Song Of Nature

Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,--
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule;--
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882

English orchard diary-apple blossom time

SPRING PRAYER

For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!

For blue of stream and blue of sky;
For pleasant shade of branches high;
For fragrant air and cooling breeze;
For beauty of the blooming trees,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.


His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.


For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.


I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.


This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.




Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is a mystical poem, by an unknown New England author, found in the collection Divine Hymns or Spiritual Songs by Joshua Smith of New Hampshire, dated 1784. The setting best known and recorded today is by Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987)

Apple Blossoms by Mark Senior

Mark Senior 1862 – 1927
http://www.larkshill.org.uk/mark_senior.html

Thomas the Rhymer

Thomas the Rhymer, of Ercledoune, in 13th Century Scotland, was warned not to eat the Otherworldly Apple offered by the Faerie Queen, or he would be unable to return to mortal life.

Wild Apples, The History of the Apple-Tree

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple-tree is connected with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of the Rosaceœ, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the Labiatœ, or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous to the appearance of man on the globe.

It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown primitive people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so old that they had no metallic implements. An entire black and shriveled Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.

Tacitus says of the ancient Germans, that they satisfied their hunger with wild apples (agrestia poma) among other things.

Niebuhr observes that "the words for a house, a field, a plough, ploughing, wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to agriculture and the gentler way of life, agree in Latin and Greek, while the Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the chase are utterly alien from the Greek, while the Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the cause are utterly alien from the Greek." Thus the apple-tree may be considered a symbol of peace no less than the olive.

The apple was early so important, and generally distributed, that its name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in general. Mhlon, in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of other trees, also a sheep and any cattle, and finally riches in general.

The apple-tree has been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians. Some have thought that the first human pair were tempted by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it, dragons were set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.

The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament, and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings, -- "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." And again, -- "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." The noblest part of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "the apple of the eye."

The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in the glorious garden of Alcinous "pears and pomegranates, and apple-trees bearing beautiful fruit" (kai mhleai aglaokarpoi). And according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and described the apple-tree as a botanist.

According to the Prose Edda, "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in renovated youth until Ragnarök" (or the destruction of the gods).

I learn from Loudon that "the ancient Welsh bards were rewarded for excelling in song, by the token of the applespray"; and "in the Highlands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the clan Lamont."

The apple-tree, (Pyrus malus) belongs chiefly to the northern temperate zone. London says, that "it grows spontaneously in every part of Europe, except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China, and Japan." We have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous in North America. The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced into this country by the earliest settlers, and it is thought to do as well or better here than anywhere else. Probably some of the varieties which are now cultivated were first introduced into Britain by the Romans.

Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says, - "Of trees there are some which are altogether wild (sylvestres), song more, civilized (urbaniores)." Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and, indeed, it is in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless as a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks and herds. It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like the dog and horse and cow: first, perchance from Greece to Italy, thence to England: thence to America; and our Western emigrant is still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his load. At least a million apple-trees are thus set farther westward this year than any cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the Blossom-Week, like the Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the prairies; for when man migrates, he carries with him not only his birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his very sword, but his orchard also.

The leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic animals, as the cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought after by the first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to have existed a natural alliance between these animals and this tree from the first. "The fruit of the Crab in the forests of France" is said to be "a great resource for the wild-boar."

Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the blue-bird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring, quite round the tree, before he left it, -- a thing which he had never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and still flies, from the wood, to pluck them, much to the farmer's sorrow. The rabbit, too, was not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark; and when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half-rolled, half-carried it to his hole; and even the musquash crept up the bank from the brook at evening, and greedily devoured it, until he had worn a path in the grass there; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and the jay were glad to taste it occasionally. The owl crept into the first apple-tree that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him; so settling down into it, he has remained there ever since.

My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to my special province.

The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually handsome one, whose blossoms are two-thirds expanded. How superior it is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor fragrant!

By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little ones which fall still-born, as it were, -- Nature thus thinning them for us. The Roman writer Palladius said,-- "If apples are inclined to fall before their time, a stone placed in a split root will retain them." Some such notion, still surviving, may account for some of the stones which we see placed to be overgrown in the forks of trees. They have a saying in Suffolk, England, --
"At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core."
Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more to scent your hand-kerchief with than any perfume which they sell in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona, -- carrying me forward to those days when they will be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the cider-mills.

A week or two later, as you are going, by orchards or gardens, especially in the evenings, you pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and without robbing anybody.

There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the god-like among men begin to taste its ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to perceive, -- just as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing, it. When I see a particularly mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant early apples to market, I seem to see a contest going on between him and his horse, on the one side, and the apples on the other, and, to my mind, the apples always gain it. Pliny says that apples are the heaviest of all things, and that the oxen begin to sweat at the mere sight of a load of them. Our driver begins to lose his load the moment he tries to transport them to where they do not belong, that is, to any but the most beautiful. Though he gets out from time to time, and feels of them, and thinks they are all there, I see the stream of their evanescent and celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while the pulp and skin and core only are going to market. They are not apples, but pomace. Are not these still Iduna's apples, the taste of which keeps the gods forever young? and think you that they will let Loki or Thjassi carry them off to Jötunheim, while they grow wrinkled and gray? No, for Ragnarök, or the destruction of the gods, is not yet.

There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of August or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls; and this happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In some orchards you may see fully three quarters of the whole crop on the ground, lying in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and green, -- or, if it is a hill-side, rolled far down the hill. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. All the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls, and this will make them cheap for early apple-pies.

In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct in the trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit than I remembered to have ever seen before, small yellow apples banging over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight, like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character. Even the topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and drooped in all directions; and there were so many poles supporting the lower ones, that they looked like pictures of banian-trees. As an old English manuscript says, "The mo appelen the tree bereth, the more sche boweth to the folk."

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or the swiftest have it. That should be the "going" price of apples.

Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie under the trees. And perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some choice barrels to fulfil an order. He turns a specked one over many times before he leaves it out. If I were to tell what is passing in my mind, I should say that every one was specked which he had handled; for he rubs off all the bloom, and those fugacious ethereal qualifies leave it. Cool evenings prompt the farmers to make haste, and at length I see only the ladders here and there left leaning against the trees.

It would be well, if we accepted these gifts with more joy and gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular Antiquities." It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in it, and carrying it in state to the orchard, they salute the apple-trees with much ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next season." This salutation consists in "throwing some of the cider about the roots of the tree, placing, bits of the toast on the branches," and then, "encircling one, of the best bearing trees in the orchard, they drink the following toast three several times: --
"'Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst, blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!'"
Also what was called "apple-howling" used to be practised in various counties of England on New-Year's eve. A troop of boys visited the different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees, repeated the following words: --
"Stand fast, root! bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bough, apples enow!"


"They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on a cow's horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with, their sticks." This is called "wassailing" the trees, and is thought by some to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona."

Herrick sings, --
"Wassaile the trees that they mail beare
You many a plum and many a peare;
For more or less fruits they will bring,
As you so give them wassailing."

Our poets have as yet a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it behooves them to sing, better than English Phillips did, else they will do no credit to their Muse.

SO much for the more civilized apple trees (urbaniores, as Pliny calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted apple-trees, at whatever season of the year, -- so irregularly planted; sometimes two trees standing close together; and the rows so devious that you would think that they not only had grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a somnambulic state. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these. But I now, alas, speak rather from memory than from any recent experience, such ravages have been made!

Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my neighborhood, are so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster in them without any care, or if only the ground is broken up once a year, than it will in many places with any amount of care. The owners of this tract allow that the soil is excellent for fruit, but they say that it is so rocky that they have not patience to plough it, and that, together with the distance, is the reason why it is not cultivated. There are, or were recently, extensive orchards there standing without order. Nay, they spring up wild and bear well there in the midst of pines, birches, maples, and oaks. I am often surprised to see rising amid these trees the rounded tops of apple-trees glowing with red or yellow fruit, in harmony with the autumnal tints of the forest.

Going up the side of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it, uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered. It was a rank wild growth, with many green leaves on it still, and made an impression of thorniness. The fruit was hard and green, but looked as if it would be palatable in the winter. Some was dangling, on the twigs, but more half-buried in the wet leaves under the tree, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The owner knows nothing of it. The day was not observed when it first blossomed, nor when it first bore fruit, unless by the chickadee. There was no dancing, on the green beneath it in its honor, and now there is no hand to pluck its fruit, -- which is only gnawed by squirrels, as I perceive. It has done double duty, -- not only borne this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this is such fruit! bigger than many berries, we must admit, and carried home will be sound and palatable next spring. What care I for Iduna's apples so long as I can get these?

When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit, I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature's bounty, even though I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hill-side has grown an apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting; but the apple emulates man's independence and enterprise. It is not simply carried, as I have said, but, like him, to some extent, it has migrated to this New World, and is even, here and there, making its way amid the aboriginal trees; just as the ox and dog and horse sometimes run wild and maintain themselves.

Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so noble a fruit.

The Crab

NEVERTHELESS, our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal Crab-Apple, Malus coronaria, "whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation." It is found from Western New-York to Minnesota, and southward. Michaux says that its ordinary height "is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it is sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet high," and that the large ones "exactly resemble the common apple-tree." "The flowers are white mingled with rose-color, and are collected in corymbs." They are remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit, according to him, is about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely acid. Yet they make fine sweetmeats, and also cider of them. He concludes, that, "if, on being cultivated, it does not yield new and palatable varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the beauty of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume."

I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had occasion to go to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to notice from the cars a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me, that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It was the prevailing, flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the year, -- about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one, and so I was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having touched one, experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St. Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too far north for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about eight miles west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and secured a lingering corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near its northern limit.

How the Wild Apple Grows

BUT though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple-trees, which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus: --

Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been, -- as the rocky ones of our Easterbrooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and other accidents, -- their very birthplace defending them against the encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.
In two years' time 't had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the, stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.


But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but the next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes, it for a fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that brought you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it may be, that he has some title to it.

Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against such foes. In their thorniness, however, there is no malice, only some malic acid.

The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to -- for they maintain their ground best in a rocky field -- are thickly sprinkled with these little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or lichens, and you see thousands of little trees just springing up between them, with the seed still attached to them.

Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins' nests in one which was six feet in diameter.

No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the day they were planted, but infants still when you consider their development and the long life before them. I counted the annual rings of some which were just one foot high, and as wide as high, and found that they were about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty! They were so low that they were unnoticed by the walker, while many of their contemporaries from the nurseries were already bearing considerable crops. But what you gain in time is perhaps in this case, too, lost in power, -- that is, in the vigor of the tree. This is their pyramidal state.

The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad that they become their own fence, when some interior shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph.

Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now, if you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you will see that it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but that out of its apex there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than an orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its repressed energy to these upright parts. In a short time these become a small tree, an inverted pyramid resting on the apex of the other, so that the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The spreading bottom, having served its purpose, finally disappears, and the generous tree permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand in its shade, and rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown in spite of them, and even to taste a part of its fruit, and so disperse the seed.

Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its hour-glass being inverted, lives a second life, as it were.

It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should trim young apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox trims them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the right height, I think.

In spite of wandering kine, and other adverse circumstances, that despised shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter from hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in course of time its harvest, sincere, though small.

By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently see such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it, and I make haste to taste the new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons and Knight. This is the system of Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable varieties than both of them.

Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though somewhat small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that which has grown in a garden, -- will perchance be all the sweeter and more palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend with. Who knows but this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a bird on some remote and rocky hill-side, where it is as yet unobserved by man, may be the choicest of all its kind, and foreign potentates shall hear of it, and royal societies seek to propagate it, though the virtues of the perhaps truly crabbed owner of the soil may never be heard of, -- at least, beyond the limits of his village? It was thus the Porter and the Baldwin grew.

Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck them.

This is one, and the most remarkable way, in which the wild apple is propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods and swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows with comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are very tall and slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a perfectly mild and tamed fruit. As Palladius says, "Et injussu consternitur ubere mali" : And the ground is strewn with the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree.

It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not bear a valuable fruit of their own, they are the best stocks by which to transmit to posterity the most highly prized qualities of others. However, I am not in search of stocks, but the wild fruit itself, whose fierce gust has suffered no "inteneration." It is not my

"highest plot
To plant the Bergamot."

The Fruit, and its Flavor

THE time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of November. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and they are still perhaps as beautiful as ever. I make a great account of these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the while to gather, -- wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting. The farmer thinks that he has better in his barrels, but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker's appetite and imagination, neither of which can he have.

Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till the first of November, I presume that the owner does not mean to gather. They belong to children as wild as themselves, -- to certain active boys that I know -- to the wild-eyed woman of the fields, to whom nothing comes amiss, who gleans after all the world, -- and, moreover, to us walkers. We have met with them, and they are ours. These rights, long enough insisted upon, have come to be an institution in some old countries, where they have learned how to live. I hear that "the custom of grippling, which may be called apple-gleaning, is, or was formerly, practiced in Herefordshire. It consists in leaving a few apples, which are called the gripples, on every tree, after the general gathering, for the boys, who go with climbing-poles and bags to collect them."

As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to this quarter of the earth, -- fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead, frequented only by the woodpecker and the squirrel, deserted now by the owner, who has not faith enough to look under their boughs. From the appearance of the tree-top, at a little distance, you would expect nothing but lichens to drop from it, but your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn with spirited fruit, -- some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them, -- some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly sought after in past years.

I have seen no account of these among the "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," though they are more memorable to my taste than the grafted kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess, when October and November, when December and January, and perhaps February and March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer in my neighborhood, who always selects the right word, says that "they have a kind of bow-arrow tang."

Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so much for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and bearing qualities, -- not so much for their beauty, as for their fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of pomological gentlemen. Their "Favorites" and "None-suches" and "Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited them, commonly turn out very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.

What if some of these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine verjuice, do they not still belong to the Pomaceæ, which are uniformly innocent and kind to our race? I still begrudge them to the cider-mill. Perhaps they are not fairly ripe yet.

No wonder that these small and high-colored apples are thought to make the best cider. Loudon quotes from the "Herefordshire Report," that "apples of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be preferred to those of a larger size, in order that the rind and kernel may bear the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords the weakest and most watery juice." And he says, that, "to prove this, Dr. Symonds, of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and another from the pulp only, when the first was found of extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and insipid."

Evelyn says that the "Red-strake" was the favorite cider-apple in his day and he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, "In Jersey 't is a general observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has in its rind, the more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples they exclude as much as may be from their cider-vat." This opinion still prevails.

All apples are good in November. Those which the farmer leaves out as unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are choicest fruit to the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild apple, which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or woods, being brought into the house has frequently a harsh and crabbed taste. The Saunterer's Apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house. The palate rejects it there, as it does haws and acorns, and demands a tamed one; for there you miss the November air, which is the sauce it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when Tityrus, seeing the lengthening shadows, invites Meliboeus to go home and pass the night with him, he promises him mild apples and soft chestnuts, -- mitia poma, castaneœ molles. I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber, I find it unexpectedly crude, -- sour enough to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream.

These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly seasoned, and they pierce and sting and permeate us with their spirit. They must be eaten in season, accordingly, -- that is, out-of-doors.

To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves, and the jay, is heard screaming around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labelled, "To be eaten in the wind."

Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps one-half of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-doors. One Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1t782, for the Proceedings of the Boston Academy, describing an apple-tree in that town "producing fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently sour and the other sweet"; also some all sour, and others all sweet, and this diversity on all parts of the tree.

There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuct Hill in my town which has to me a peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it smells exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish it. I hear that the fruit of a kind of plumtree in Provence is "called Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and clearer?

In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated; just as the wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle of a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there and dreams of summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would make a student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold, but rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour and sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and bitters which the diseased palate refuses, are the true condiments.

Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses, papillae firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily flattened and tamed.

From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an out-door man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.

What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!
"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-checked 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!"
So there is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.


Their Beauty

ALMOST all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed or sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some part of its sphere. It will have some red stains, commemorating the mornings and evenings it has witnessed; some dark and rusty blotches, in memory of the clouds and foggy, mildewy days that have passed over it; and a spacious field of green reflecting the general face of Nature, -- green even as the fields; or a yellow ground, which implies a milder flavor, -- yellow as the harvest, or russet as the hills.

Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair, -- apples not of Discord, but of Concord! Yet not so rare but that the homeliest may have a share. Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the influence of the sun on all sides alike, -- some with the faintest pink blush imaginable, -- some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running, regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground, -- some touched with a greenish rust, like a fine lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less confluent and fiery when wet, -- and others gnarly, and freckled or peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a white ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat, --- apple of the Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and faded in the house.

The Naming of Them

IT would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred varieties which go to a single heap at the cider mill. Would it not tax a man's invention, -- no one to be named after a man, and all in the lingua vernacula? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they were used, and make the lingua vernacula flag. We should have to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, to our aid.

In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which our Crab might yield to cultivation.

Let us enumerate a few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to give the Latin names of some for the benefit of those who live where English is not spoken, -- for they are likely to have a world-wide reputation.

There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis) also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple, (Cessatoris,) which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer's Apple, -- you must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decus Aëris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Chickaree Apple ; the Green Apple (Malus viridis); -- this has many synonymes; in an imperfect state, it is the Cholera morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima; -- the Apple which Atalanta stopped to pick up; the Hedge Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple (limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue, -- Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous to mention, -- all of them good. As Bodaeus exclaims, referring to the cultivated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I, adapting Bodaeus, --
"Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples."

The Last Gleaning

BY the middle of November the wild apples have lost some of their brilliancy, and have chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the ground, and the sound ones are more palatable than before. The note of the chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the old trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half-closed and tearful. But still, if you are a skilful gleaner, you may get many a pocket-full even of grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed to be gone out-of-doors. I know a Blue-Pearmain tree, growing within the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose that there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and decaying, ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself, -- a proper kind of packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and perhaps with a leaf or two cemented to it, (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's mouldy cellar,) but still with a rich bloom on it, and at least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If these resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to look between the bases of the suckers which spring thickly from some horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump, where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance.

I learn from Topsell's Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus, that the following is the way in which the hedgehog collects and carries home his apples. He says, -- "His meat is apples, worms, or grapes: when he findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself upon them, until he have filled all his prickles, and then carrieth them home to his den, never bearing above one in his mouth; and if it fortune that one of them fall off by the way, he likewise shaketh off all the residue, and walloweth upon them afresh, until they be all settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones in his nest, they pull off his load wherewithal he is loaded, eating thereof what they please, and laying up the residue for the time to come."

The "Frozen-Thawed" Apple

TOWARD the end of November, though some of the sound ones are yet more mellow and perhaps more edible, they have generally, like the leaves, lost their beauty, and are beginning to freeze. It is finger-cold, and prudent farmers get in their barrelled apples, and bring you the apples and cider which they have engaged; for it is time to put them into the cellar. Perhaps a few on the ground show their red cheecks above the early snow, and occasionally some even preserve their color and soundness under the snow throughout the winter. But generally at the beginning of the winter they freeze hard, and soon, though undecayed, acquire the color of a baked apple.

Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have more substance, are a sweet and luscious food, -- in my opinion of more worth than the pine-apples which are imported from the West Indies. Those which lately even I tasted only to repent of it, -- for I am semi-civilized, -- which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of the young oaks. It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first, solid as stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get home, that those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is turned to cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and thawing they will not be found so good.

What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South, to this fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that I might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with them, -- bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the overflowing juice, -- and grow more social with their wine. Was there one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of, -- quite distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and cider, -- and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

THE era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England. You may still wander through old orchards of native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went to the cider-mill, now all gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in a distant town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and lay four feet deep against a wall on the lower side, and this the owner cut down for fear they should be made into cider. Since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no native apple-trees, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up around them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know! Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if so extensive orchards are set out to-day in my town as there were a century ago, when those vast straggling cider-orchards were planted, when men both ate and drank apples, when the pomace-heap was the only nursery, and trees cost nothing but the trouble of setting them out. Men could afford then to stick a tree by every wall-side and let it take its chance. I see nobody planting trees to-day in such out-of-the-way places, along the lonely roads and lanes, and at the bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees, and pay a price for them, they collect them into a plat by their houses, and fence them in, -- and the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a barrel.

This is "The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

"Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the, land! Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?....

"That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

" Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine! for it is cut off from your mouth.

"For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion.

"He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white....

"Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen! howl, O ye vine-dressers!....

"The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men."



Wild Apples
The History of the Apple-Tree
by Henry David Thoreau