All about apples (part one)
This week I have had a chance to have fun thinking about apples. Just at the moment one of our trees is still full of them. I am also led to believe that next weekend there is a world wide Apple Festival. (News to me but you know how these odd facts crop up – just don’t ask from where.)
Nevertheless the hint about this was sufficient for me to do two weeks on the subject of apples. Yeh I do have that many pictures.
Apples are something I take very much for granted. Whenever I go to the greengrocers (no I don’t shop for them at the supermarket) there are always apples – but they never seem to be the variety that were there last week. But if its variety and quantity of apples that you’re after you’ll have to wait until next week’s blog.
This week the blog is full of curious facts and of course even more curious pictures.
I hadn’t considered that apples have been grown for eating for over 8500 years. Originally it seems they first appeared in Kazakhstan. My association with ancient Greek cultures seems to refer to heroes and gods either eating, avoiding or sending apples to people – usually golden ones. They must have been pretty rare. I’ve never encountered golden ones at any of the markets in East Anglia. (I am sure someone will correct me on that).
The Romans loved apples and I have heard it said that they brought apples to this country
The Norse Golden Apples are different from their Greek counterparts because they’re extremely important to the Norse deities. All of the Norse gods needed the apples to maintain their immortality and eternal youth, and Idun, the goddess of spring, was the keeper of their orchard.
I enjoyed the use to which St Augustine put the apple. It did, he claimed, explain the phenomena of evil. Evil was not a substance, it wasn’t a creation and certainly not created by God, it was goodness that had simply been neglected!
There’s one to think about.
Artists and apples – certainly the 20th century was full of artistic interpretation of the fruit. I can’t really show those because of copyright considerations, not even my imitations, I will get brave though with Cezanne – someone once asked if I could produce anything similar.
Too much chat this week. Hope your weekend is good.