Wednesday, December 17, 2014

"llinois orchards are apple shy"




     Well, THAT was easy!
     The way it usually works is that a questions comes to mind — such as "Hey, what happened to the apples this year?" The apple tree in our backyard didn't offer up a single Golden Delicious. Unless the squirrels (boo, hiss) stripped all the apples before I could even see them. But that's doubtful.
     So the question forms, then I dig, in this case probably call the Chicago Botanic Garden, whatever National Apple Board is out there, find the truth, write it, serve it up here piping hot.
      But the apple question, well, it formed, but never got answered. Other stories crowded it out. I dropped the ball, err, the apple. I forgot.
      Then Edie and I were walking Sunday in the Botanic Garden, taking advantage of the mild weather. The Botanic Garden can be surprisingly beautiful in winter, even without its flowers, offering up a muted palette of soft browns and quiet grays. We were strolling through the apple orchard, and came upon this sign. 


      There we go. I should point out that the apple harvest for the nation as a whole was up this year. Washington State is the center of American apple production,  harvesting more than 100 times the apples that Illinois does, and there the weather in 2014 was just fine.  The apple crop was depressed in the Upper Midwest, and even then, other states fared better than Illinois, which is fourth, apple wise, after Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. 
     Okay, better end it here, before this turns into another grapefruit story. I was certainly interested in that, and if you aren't, my apologies, and we'll try this again tomorrow. 

11 comments:

  1. Just 400 miles away near Minneapolis my daughter's apple tree was loaded this year. They have bushels and bushels. The deer are still visiting the tree and snatching apples from it. Go figure!
    Barbara Palmer

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  2. Oh, sure, this couldn't be a Saturday contest photo... We saw that sign a couple months ago. : (

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  3. BTW, did you do something to the robot-confounding test? They seem a lot easier tonight.

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    1. I checked the settings, and the comments section can only be made harder -- only registered users, etc. -- rather than easier. I could complain to Blogger about it. What's the problem? This gets lots of spam, so I need a filter of some sort, otherwise all the comments would be "Hey, love this fantastic content. Please visit my discount wiper blade web site..."

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    2. Hey, I was saying it seems to be easier, so, no problem with that! I understand that you need to keep out spam spewed forth by our pesky computer overlords. I'm just surprised at how proficient the blasted robots must be, given how difficult to interpret some of the letter combinations are. I try to look at it as a marvel, rather than a nuisance, but despite careful study and interpretation, I'd say there've been at least a half-dozen times when my entry has not been a match and I've had to do it again. No big deal -- just interesting to me.

      Re: the apple shortage and the "boo, hiss" squirrels. This is also only going to be interesting to me, but when we were at the Botanic Garden, there was an apple tree in the English Walled Garden that seemed to be offering plenty of fruit. We got a swell photo of a squirrel propped on a branch, holding and consuming an apple that was, to play off burrito-place hype, significantly bigger than its head. I hadn't realized that squirrels were even fond of apples until then.

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  4. Hey, don't disparage the grapefruit saga -- some of us liked it even better than the Cheney bashing, which was kind of cute too.

    John

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  5. No, no, I was pleased with that. But one face forward drop into fruit minutia a week is sufficient. I'm trying to discipline myself to have shorter posts, from time to time, so as not to bore my audience. But the tendency is to dig -- I was asking myself, "But what is the national apple crop like this year?" and if I wasn't careful I was going to slide into Johnny Appleseed and applesauce and where "the apple of my eye" came from.

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    1. I don't mind if your posts are longer. You aren't limited unlike the paper.

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  6. Our backyard apple tree also had a bumper crop this year (in the western burbs). Our neighborhood chipmunks cleaned up those wormy apples as fast as they fell! Interesting to find out that we weren't supposed to have apples due to the severe winter!

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  7. I wonder if the biennial cycle is area wide or tree specific?

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  8. Wholesale Michigan frozen apple prices are low, so Michigan had a good crop this year.

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