An Autumn Without Apples

[babylonsister]

An Autumn Without Apples
by Silver Donald Cameron

ISLE MADAME, Nova Scotia - “That Looks like an apple tree,” I said to Marjorie. “But how come it doesn’t have any apples?”1028 02

Feral apple trees abound in Isle Madame - dotted through the woods, standing gnarled in deserted fields, adorning the edges of roads. They include several different varieties - probably heritage strains, since they apparently descend from orchards planted by French settlers in the 18th century. In October, they should be groaning with apples. But this one, growing beside a long-abandoned road, bore not a single fruit.

Later that day, I drove the five miles from the bridge at Lennox Passage to my house in D’Escousse. Apple trees grow along that road as closely as schoolchildren waiting to cheer a parade - so many, in fact, that I would like to see the dull name “Route 320″ replaced by Route des Pommiers/Apple Tree Road.

But I saw no pommes on Route des Pommiers either.

By now I was curious, and rather alarmed. What about my own fruit trees, the ones that grow around my boat shed, and carpet the ground with little sour apples at this time of year? Local deer-hunters generally phone me in the fall to ask if they can have the apples to set out as deer-bait. But nobody had called this year.

No wonder. Five trees, and between them they had barely produced enough apples to make a pie.

My buddy Edwin DeWolf, who built the shed, drove up beside me.

“No apples this year,” I said.

“No apples anywhere,” said Edwin. “No bees, that’s why.”

Ye gods.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/28/4858/

[acmavm]

1. Wow! I had almost no apples either. It's always a mess picking them

up off the ground. But not this year.

I wonder...

[babylonsister]

2. Our neighbor has a big old pecan tree-no pecans this year. I also wonder... nt

[acmavm]

7. I didn't see any bees this year. None at all. When the news about

colony die-off first came out, I kind of paid attention. And now, it all makes sense.

But I didn't know that it was this bad.

We are surely in a hell of a lot of trouble.

But this will make Monsanto a happy bunch of clams.

[Gman]

16. Pecan trees don't need bees

and they bear pecans every other year or so. Here in San Antonio I've already picked up over 100 lbs. of pecans in my backyard with probably another 25 - 30 lbs. still on the ground or still to come down. (I'll get most of them today.) That blustery cold front last week helped bring most of 'em down.

OTOH, I've also got a vine that covers about 60 feet of 6' fence in the backyard. The vine has strings of small pink flowers not too different in color and style than a crepe myrtle. I forget the name of it. Queen's crown somethingorother. Many years past the pink flowers were thick and the entire vine would loudly hum with bees. This year there was a faint hum from not near as many bees and not as many flowers.

[babylonsister]

18. Thanks for that; I know they don't need bees, as there are tons of

them here, at least the big black ones that love my passion flower vines. I just thought it odd that there were no pecans; I don't recall a fall where this tree didn't have them, and we've lived here about 14 years.

[Gman]

19. It is true that pecan trees bear nuts every year

it's just that on the average, every other year is a good crop. Last year I had relatively few pecans and not really any amount that were good. They were mostly smaller (the drought) and already rotten. I can remember a year or two in the past 10-15 when there were no pecans. It doesn't happen often at all.

This year is a bumper crop. I probably would have had close to 175 lbs. except that the tree started literally falling apart with huge branches breaking off from the weight of the heavy pecans and the huge amount of moisture from the excessive rain in June and July.

[Frustratedlady]

5. We had an ice storm which took care of most of the apples, pears, etc.

My pear tree, which is generally loaded with big, beautiful pears, only has a dozen or so pears the size of a golf ball. The deer are not happy.

Our local apple orchards are struggling to make a living from the small bounty they got. They did have a goodly amount of honey for sale, but not much else. I am passing on the homemade applesauce, this year. All core and no flesh to the apple.

[pansypoo53219]

22. try transparent apples

summer apple makes the best sauce. called Lodi apples now. i am so glad my grandma instroduced me to that apple. macs are just for crisp to me. so far so good at the farmer's market this year. saw plenty of bees this year. lots of bugs, except mosquitos til we got rain. just saw a butterfly while in the back yard. beezarre for Oct.

[Frustratedlady]

23. It used to be that everyone had a transparent apple tree in their backyard.

Those were the apples I used until the last 10 years. Now, we rarely see them. People used to have so many, they gave them away if you picked them up. I agree. They can't be beat for applesauce. Our apples are so expensive, I bought store applesauce on sale the other day. Other women were doing the same.

I have hardly seen a bee this summer. We have three houses in a row with big yards filled with flowers and flowering bushes. We have paper wasps, but no bees. We didn't have the migration of monarch butterflies, either. There are moths and small butterflies, but not the larger butterflies like we normally have.

We have a couple in town who planted banana trees and had their first bananas this summer. They should get frozen out, but they've been trying to grow them for several years and they made it through the winters. Crazy.

[SoCalDem]

8. The other day at the grocery store, the apples ON SALE were

$1.49 lb ..

:cry:

Apples "were" the last true bargain left because of the abundance..and yet... now even they are too expensive for most people.. My new favorite apple, Honeycrisps were $2.99 lb..

[acmavm]

11. Yeah, I noticed the increase in price in all fruits. Oranges are bad too.

Pears, strawberries, they were all higher than they normally are.

[SpiralHawk]

3. The (non) fruits of poisoning our planet

“We saw almost no fruits of any kind this year,”" said Farley. “No plums, no cherries, nothing. And it affected all kinds of things. It was a cold, wet, late spring, and we had so few insects this year that the insectivore species of birds didn’t reproduce. The tree swallows and the barn swallows live on flying insects. They made nests, but they didn’t lay eggs and they didn’t stay around. I’ve never seen them behave that way before.”

(snip)

[cali]

4. How weird

I had tons of fabulous apples this year. Made apple butter, apple sauce, apple jelly and chutney.

[peacebird]

13. we had apple butter day last weekend. The trees here were loaded with fruit.

I guess we are among the fortunate ones, I still see bees but nowhere near as many as I used to.

[NickB79]

6. I guess we've been lucky here in Minnesota

My dad's tree, and my grandma's orchard, are all loaded down this year.

Now I've probably jinxed myself for all future apple harvests.

[SpiralHawk]

9. Ye Olde Spirale Hawke hauled in a MAJOR harvest of backyard Jonathans (organic, natch)

And is still smacking his lips as he gobbles down quart after quart of applesauce. I gave bushels away to friends and family, and that is such a nice thing to be able to do for people you care about...

[JitterbugPerfume]

10. lots of apples here

in Indiana and Michigan. I am just getting ready to can and freeze some.

[thecrow]

12. I had a lot of peaches, but

it rained the day before I was going to pick them.
The next day all my peaches were shriveled and mummified and had turned to shrunken gray fuzzy masses.
It was like the rain held some sort of fungus.

[Fierce]

14. Many apples and pears get in the habit of bearing biennially.

Before panicking, make sure this is not the case.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. Time to start planting those banana and mango trees.

[Cha]

17. Poor Isle Madam,

Nova Scotia! I love Nova Scotia..it's one of the best places on Earth!~

I like what this person has to write..

"Hear Iz Kilroy October 28th, 2007 12:37 pm
Of course, ___ someone will explain that it is not the lack of honey bees that is the problem. ____ It’s the temperature flux, or pesticides or whatever.

Well, the lack of bees of EVERY type is the problem, the SUDDEN lack of birds and bees is a warning from Mother Nature and the major reason for their decline is the ammount of DU in the air. We will all find out within two more years that we humans have killed a planet."

"They" can explain oddities in Nature anyway they want but the Bottom Line Of Nature is..It's sure as The Planet Spins that mankind needs to take of of Nature MORE and that means not Polluting..and that means you, the USA, with your freak-show "clean air inititives"(pathetic joke).

[Inkyfuzzbottom]

20. I live in western Missouri

We had a hard freeze in May which killed all the blossoms on my fruit trees. No apples, apricots, pears or nectarines this year.

[Petrushka]

21. Lotsa bees but hard freeze meant no apples, pears, peaches, cherries, plums, or walnuts here. (eom)

[Duppers]

24. K & R

nt