F is for Fairy

Fairies at the bottom of the garden

In 1920, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s greatest detective, was hoodwinked by two Yorkshire girls.

The girls, cousins Frances Griffith and Elsie Wright (no relation to your humble correspondent), had taken a series of photos that seemed to clearly show them with the fairies they played with in Elsie’s large and enchanting garden in Cottingley.

Frances Griffith in the garden with fairy visitors. Image: Science & Society Picture Library

Elsie Wright and fairy friend. Image: Science & Society Picture Library.

Although Elsie’s Dad laughed off the photos, her Mum, like many at the time, was quite taken with ideas of the supernatural.

After attending a lecture on spiritualism she showed the photos to the speaker, to get his opinion on their veracity.

He took them to the leader of the Theosophical movement, who in turn asked a leading photographer to examine them.

Having been declared “genuine, unfaked photographs” they rocketed through the British spiritualist crowd, quickly gaining the attention of Conan Doyle, who not only encouraged the girls to take more photos of the fairies but also wrote an article in their defence for The Strand magazine.

To those of us living in an era of photoshop and instagram filters the pictures of the Cottingley Fairies are blatantly staged.

(Curiously, the word blatant, is said to have been coined by Edmund Spenser in his epic poem The Fairie Queene to describe a thousand-tongued monster representing slander. The meaning of the word changed over time, until 1889 when it settled in as "noisy in an offensive and vulgar way.”)

Nonetheless, the girls stuck to their story until 1981, when Elsie finally admitted the fairies were paper cutouts, copied from images in a book and secured in place with hat pins.

“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”

— Richard Dawkins

Fairy Rings

So if no one’s managed to capture a fairy – yet – what about the evidence of their parties and gatherings?

Fairy Ring of Clitocybe nebularis (Clouded Agaric) Image: Josminda, under CC Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

Fairy rings are circular enclosures of mushrooms that appear in the landscape after fairies have visited for a knees-up. You never see them being constructed: it all happens in the dead of night after the human realm has stopped paying attention.

Image: Richard Croft, under CC Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

Image: Kelisi, under CC Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

Some (boring) humans are not satisfied with this explanation. They believe that fairy rings are the result of fungi that live in the soil, causing the organic matter to break down, resulting in rings of dark green grass, occasionally brown or dead grass, and, in wet conditions, mushrooms following the same circular pattern.

Image: Zorba the Greek, under CC Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

The fairy ring starts with a single spore and at a single point in the soil. It grows outward at a uniform rate, creating the circular pattern. About 50 species of fungi form lawn fairy rings.

In Your Garden

Some websites provide information on how to get rid of fairy rings. This is not an approach endorsed by Landscapology – would you mess with a supernatural creature known for its mischievious malice when dealing with interfering humans?

Image: Cropcircles, under CC Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

Keep in good by planting Grevillea 'Fairy Floss', a small rockery grevillea with pale mauve flowers, or attract the Superb Fairy Wren – voted Australia’s most popular bird in 2013 - with Acacia fimbriata, Melaleuca linariifolia and Pandorea pandorana.

Grevillea 'Fairy Floss'. Image: Tatters, under CC Licence via Flickr.

A pair of Superb Fairy Wrens. Why is the lady always the dull one...don't get me started... Image: benjamint444, under CC Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

Above all, keep your eyes and ears open…who knows how many other creatures are enjoying your garden when you’re not around…

E is for Eucalypt

10 Eucalyptus-scented thoughts to clear the Monday morning fog

1. Coolabah

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, under the shade of a…what? Not a wattle, bunya pine or weeping fig tree, that’s for sure.

No, our jumbuck-filching, tuckerbag-stuffing antihero spent his last moment beneath a coolabah tree. Eucalyptus coolabah is found in riparian zones, like our man’s billabong, and is often wider than it is tall. The 350 year-old Dig Tree, forever associated with the disastrous Burke and Wills expedition, is also a coolabah.  My dad really, really wants to see it.

Image: William Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, published 1857. Wikimedia Commons.

2. Canoes and baskets

If the dodgy swagman had paid more attention to his surroundings, he could perhaps have negotiated the billabong with less finality: aborigines have crafted canoes from eucalypts for centuries.

Like the coolabah, the river red gum (E. camaldulensis) grows along waterways, and is the most widely distributed eucalypt species in the country. Bark from the trees was fashioned into canoes used for fishing and river crossings, and canoe trees bearing the scars of earlier use can be seen throughout south-eastern Australia.

3. Fire and brimstone

The other thing old mate could have done is set fire to the tree.  As a natural incendiary device you’d be hard pressed to find better.

Eucalyptus oil is highly volatile (one reason it’s good for your schnozz and pipes), and bushfires spread via the open canopies, deep leaf litter, and long strands of peeling bark carried on the wind.

On the plus side, most eucalypts can regenerate after fire, carrying their seeds within tough capsules that the fire unlocks.

Image: Robert Kerton, CSIRO. Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons licence.

4. Gumnut Babies

Eucalypt seed pods inspired another classic from the Australian story-telling pantheon: Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. The stories, by May Gibbs, star a pair of babies, naked except for seedpods that they wear like a sort of tough, green beanie. (I admit it does sound slightly weird when put like that). With their mates in tow, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie lead the charge against the big, bad Banksia Men, arch-enemies of the ‘gumnut babies’.

5. Flowering

If the shapes of the seedpods aren’t wonderful enough, the flowers of the eucalypt are a joy to behold. For me, the West Australian eucs are the showstoppers: go to Kings Park in Perth and take a hankie, because seriously, it's a drool-fest. 

6. Margaret Preston

Of the many Australian artists who have captured the eucalypt, I have a real fondness for Margaret Preston and her bold, coloured prints. Kookaburras sit in old gum trees, they frame views to Sydney Harbour, and flowers and seedpods fill vases.

Image: John Tann. Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence.

7. Scribbling

The artists aren’t the only ones making beautiful lines – the scribbly gum is a living sketchbook. Whilst there are five varieties known as scribbly gum (E. haemastoma, E. sclerophylla, E. racemosa, E. rossii and E. signata, the only one found naturally in Queensland) their scribbles all have the same source: they are tunnels made when the larvae of the scribbly gum moth burrows between the old and new bark to lay its eggs. You could spend a lifetime trying and not be able to create patterns that exquisite.

Image: Mark Marathon. Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence.

8. Tree of Knowledge

Speaking of trying, the town of Barcaldine went to considerable time, effort and expense looking after its most famous arboreal landmark, the Tree of Knowledge, a ghost gum. Reportedly a gathering spot for striking shearers during the period of industrial disputes that led to the founding of the Labour Party, the 150+ year-old tree was receiving good quality care and thriving, when it was mysteriously poisoned in 2006. This was also trying for the town. In the same location now stands a much-awarded timber structure. From the outside it resembles an enormous box. Inside the timber pieces are arrange to create a negative of the canopy of the former tree.

The lemon-scented gums lining Fraser Avenue at the entrance to the West Australian Botanic Gardens and Kings Park.

9. In the garden

Perhaps the poisoning of the Tree of Knowledge was politically motivated, but eucalypts have somewhat of a reputation for being difficult in the garden. To hear some speak, having a euc within coo-ee of home is a death wish, as if the trees build up years of simmering resentment and then just lose it, throwing their toys and limbs out of the cot and onto innocent suburbs below. Having said that, being woken by the sound of lightning striking a euc outside our family home during a cyclonic summer night, is a very clear and strong childhood memory.

Despite this, one of Australia’s most famous gardens, Cruden Farm, the long-time home of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, is most famous for its entry drive avenue of lemon-scented gums. If you don’t have a Murdoch-sized garden what can you grow?  The plunkett mallee (E. curtisii) is a small tree, growing to 6 metres with lovely cream-coloured flowers; the swamp bloodwood (E. ptychocarpa) is a tall tree to 8 metres; and the ‘Summer’ range of hybrid gums have selected Western Australian flowering eucs grafted onto rootstock that enable them to better tolerate out humidity. Check out Fairhill Nursery’s range.

Tips for Young Players: planting two or three trees in the same hole creates a multi-trunked effect, and allows the canopies to grow together and not shade out your whole garden.

10. Holland and Ellen

Knowledge is at the heart of one of my favourite Australian novels. What lengths would you go to, to prevent your treasured only daughter from marrying and moving out? In Murray Bail’s (fabulous, wonderful) Eucalyptus, Ellen‘s dad requires suitors to name all the varieties of that tree growing on his property.

A love song to this most cherished Australian tree.

More info?

The Australian Government maintains a webpage dedicated to the Eucalypt.

All eucalypts are gum trees, but not all gum trees are eucalypts. Find out more about eucalypts, angophoras and corymbias here.

D is for Dune

It came as no surprise to me that Peter Greste chose an image taken at the beach to show the world he was free after 400 days in an Egyptian jail.

Australians claim it’s the outback that makes us, but it is to the coast we cling, to the beach we flock, drawn as far out and away from the red heart of the continent as it’s possible to be.

This country has nearly 36, 000 kilometres of coastline, and the beach threads a long line through our literature and art.

Byron Bay

With apologies to Max Dupain...

In Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Long Road to the Deep North, it is to a South Australian beach that hero Dorrigo returns, as a young man before the war, and then in a lifetime of memories.

On the gallery wall Sydney’s beaches shine, from the voluptuous ladies reclining across Brett Whiteley’s sparkling shores, to the young bloke immortalised in Max Dupain’s Sunbaker.

Of course it’s a similar story in any island nation: the beach is a place of transition - no longer solid land, not quite water – and there’s something equally fragile and terrifying about such places that speaks to us.

The great gardens of history, though, tend not to be found on the coast. Garden-makers could channel water from snow-capped mountains to the desert, bend rock and stone to their will, and summon forth plants from all corners of the globe.

Just not at the beach.  I wonder why?

The beauty of dunes

From top: Barchan, Parabolic and Transverse dunes.

My love for the coastal garden began when I was given the opportunity to work on a project that had been designed as a contemporary interpretation of Queensland’s perched lake sand islands.

The first thing I became captivated with was dunes.

These beautiful, sensuous three-dimensional forms are a precise manifestation of the interaction between wind and sand.

Where the wind has pushed its way forward the sand eases up, long and flat. Behind, where the wind has passed over, the sand falls steeply away, at the precise angle it can support itself without collapsing.

Fraser Island’s dunes are parabolic: vast sweeping fingernails of sand created by ancient erosion of the Great Dividing Range.

Like all coastal dune systems they are exposed not only to wind, but to sun and salt. This makes the dunal landscape a very particular one for plant growth.

Dunal systems

Spinifex sericeous

Taking a slice through a coastal dune system reveals the rhythm and timing of its creation, and also the diversity of locations for which specific plants have adapted.

Closest to the ocean are the beach berms, the sandy dunes with no vegetation.

Behind are the incipient dunes, home of the pioneers: low, spreading grasses and creeping plants like spinifex (Spinifex sericeous) that bind and stabilise the sand with its deep and expansive roots, and trap windblown sand, allowing the dunal system to grow.

Next rise the foredunes, or frontal dunes.

This is where bigger groundcovers, small shrubs and short-lived trees start to make an appearance. The plants of the foredune are fast-growing, prolific re-seeders, and can survive periodic burial under windblown sand.

The frontal dunes sweep down to a swale and then rises up again to the hind dunes. With the protection of the dunes, long-lived trees can establish, and beneath them a more permanent array of understorey plants.  

Plants of the dunes

Ipomea pes-caprae

Healthy coastal dune systems are critical buffers between ocean storms and our settlements, and vegetation is essential to maintaining healthy dune systems.

Luckily for garden-makers, coastal dune vegetation is extremely beautiful.

 In the incipient dune zone we’ve already talked about spinifex, with its beautiful, silver-green foliage, but for more colour there’s the bright green foliage and violet purple flowers of the Beach Morning Glory (Ipomea pes-caprae).

Banksia integrifolia

The frontal dunes give us the Coastal Wattle (Acacia sophorae), the noble Coastal Banksia (Banksia integrifolia), elegant She-Oak (Casuarina equisetifolia), architectural Screw Pine (Pandanus pedunculatus) and excellently named Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens), amongst many others.

And moving back into the hind dunes we find the Wallum Banksia (Banksia aemula), Cotton Tree (Hibiscus tileaceus), Coastal Rosemary (Westringia fruticosa), Macaranga (Macaranga tanarius) and more.

If selecting coastal plants for your garden don’t just consider what they look like.

When Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes (sigh…soundtrack to my Grade 12 school camp) moved to Australia he built a house by the beach in Tasmania. A stand of existing she-oaks stood between the house and the beach, blocking views of the water but giving the musician a greater gift: the constantly changing sound of the wind moving through the trees.

Dunal plants put up with a lot, meaning there will often be a species that can handle your situation, be it fast-draining ground, hot sun, or strong winds.

They can be combined to look naturalistic, a bit shambolic and cottage-y, or sculptural and contemporary.

I bloody love them don’t you?

C is for Chook

Busy, busy busy

Mum's chooks

Few creatures have as much on their plate (so to speak – perhaps an unfortunate choice of words!) as today's topic: chickens.

When they’re not boldly going where no chook has gone before, in search of new grubs to unearth, they’re stopping to rake the ground in long, dramatic strokes. 

When that’s done there’s always a dust bath to prepare, nests to be sat upon, and a running commentary on the state of affairs to be maintained.

And all this to be coordinated with a brain the size of a pea.

As complicated as the Tudors

For such a ubiquitous critter the domestic chicken has, according to this terrific article, “a genealogy as complicated as the Tudors, stretching back 7,000 to 10,000 years”.

 According to Charles Darwin, our chooks descend from Gallus gallus, the red junglefowl.

 One of my favourite recent second-hand bookshop finds is Lancelot Hogben’s 1938 tome Science for the Citizen. In the chapter on genetics, a brief discussion on the inheritance of different comb types in chooks provides much needed relief from the no doubt fascinating discussion of fruit flies.

 A dizzying array

If you’re into stats it may interest you to know that the British Poultry Association recognizes 92 chicken breeds, and that chickens are classified as either Large Fowl or Bantams.

Four internationally recognized breeds of chicken have been developed in Australia: Australorp, Australian Game, Australian Pit Game and Australian Langshan.

At the RNA Exhibition in Brisbane, the Poultry category continues to draw exhibitors keen for glory. Last year prizes were awarded in nearly 20 categories, each with a dizzying array of subcategories and even further classes.

There is a separate competition for eggs, with Tracy Rowlands taking out the Grand Champion Egg Exhibit of Show.

The rare Poultry Breeder’s Association of Australia holds its own annual show, with two main sections (rare Breeds and Rare Varieties) and an associated list of approved breeds, varieties, colours and abbreviations that Alan Turing would have been hard pressed to decipher.

 Zen chicken

I have a colleague who confessed once to losing track of countless hours just sitting and watching his backyard chooks go about their business.

In many ways chooks are the feathered equivalent of the doctors waiting room fishtank: the constant movement lulling the observer into a state of slack-jawed peace.

The companionability of chooks has been put to remarkable use in the UK, in a programme that uses chickens to help overcome loneliness in the elderly.

In his marvellous book More Scenes from the Rural Life, describing a year of life on his farm in upstate New York, Vernon Klinkenborg explains his affection:

“Most of the birds flutter away from me as I toss out the cracked corn, and then they fall on it greedily. But there’s always one, a Speckled Sussex hen, that will let me pick her up and hold her under my arm.

Why she lets me do that I have no idea. Why I like to is easy: the inscrutable yellow eye, the white-dotted feathers, the tortoise-shell beak, and, above all, the noises she makes…I don’t know what she is saying – perhaps only “put me down” – but it sounds like broken purring.”

Keeping chickens

We’re designing a garden project at the moment, and finding the perfect spot to house the family’s four chickens is an important part of the brief.

 Keeping chickens is remarkably easy, and there are countless books and websites (in Australia try this one; in the USA this one) that will show you how to get started. Once you’re up and running the benefits pretty much flow all your way.

 In exchange for fresh water and all the kitchen scraps you can provide, you’ll have a constant supply of fresh eggs.

In exchange for safe nighttime shelter you’ll have an industrious and personable garden companion, and that’s a delight not to be underestimated.

Any of this getting' through to you, boy?

Almost single-handedly responsible for giving roosters a bad name, here's the best (or worst) of Foghorn Leghorn.

All chicken illustrations by Amalie Wright.

B is for Bay

In San Francisco, bay is a big thing.

You’re sitting by the dock of the bay, or dreaming about bay windows fronting fairy floss coloured houses.

If you're feeling hungry you can take a trip across the bay to Chez Panisse for the duck legs braised with white wine, green olives and bay leaf.

Which brings us to today's topic:

The bay tree

Laurus nobilis. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The bay tree – Laurus nobilis – is also known as sweet bay and bay laurel.

It hails from the Mediterranean, and carries a history and mythology almost as heady as its perfume. The noble bay grows as woody tree or shrub and it leaves are dark and leathery, ruffling slightly along the edges.

Crowned with a laurel wreath

From Classical times the laurel wreath has been a symbol of victory.

Starting in the 770s BC laurel wreaths were awarded to the victors of the athletic contests that were the forerunners of the Olympic Games.

Never a group to rest on its laurels (yep, the saying had its origins here too), politicians quickly warmed to the vote-winning potential of the victory wreath.

Gaius Julius Caesar was crowned with laurel for the bravery of his fighting in Asia Minor. Some suggest he took to wearing a crown quite frequently and enthusiastically thereafter.

Leaping ahead a few centuries, Napoleon Bonparte adopted the laurel wreath as part of his brand strategy, having himself crowned with an actual gold wreath and ordering the production of coins featuring his wreath-bedecked head.

Apollo and the poets

Detail from Apollo and Daphne, by Andrea Appiani circa 1795-1800, via Wikimedia Commons.

The early laurel wreaths were created and given in honour of Apollo.

Apollo, the god of light and poetry, was the son of Zeus, and he developed quite a thing for Daphne, a beautiful mortal. This was unfortunate in many regards, chiefly because Daphne did not share his feelings.

Undeterred, Apollo pursued Daphne, until finally she asked her father to intercede. He transformed her into a laurel tree - thanks Dad – leaving Apollo heartbroken.

To remember her he took the laurel as the symbol for poets: the poet laureate is therefore one who is signified by the laurel wreath.  

Dante, he of the inferno, is often depicted wearing a wreath of laurel.

Culinary pursuits

For those less in need of crowns, the bay tree is most admired for its aromatic leaves.

The bay leaf is a key ingredient of the bouquet garni. Along with parsley and thyme this twined bundle of herbs is used to flavour stocks, soups and sauces.

Bay leaf is also the key ingredient in Queen Mab’s Pudding. This 17th century English dish of creamy custard scented with bay leaf  and laced with dried fruit is named after a fairy mentioned in a speech by Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In case you were wondering.

On the savoury side of the meal, this recipe for Laurel-Leaf Soup was given by Picasso’s muse and lover Dora Maar to Alice B. Toklas, the longtime partner of Gertrude Stein and a renowned cook, hostess and writer.

“Boil a branch of laurel with its leaves in a saucepan for 20 minutes. Remove the laurel. Stir 1 yolk of egg to every 2 cups of the laurel water. Add a little hot water to the yolk of egg, stir and add laurel water. Heat but do not allow to boil. Serve. Croutons may be added to soup.”

Toklas describes this as “an invigorating soup”, and I have no doubt it is.

Growing bay

Most homes today know bay leaves in the dried form, but the flavour is stronger in fresh leaves. Being able to pluck a fresh leaf at will is a pleasure, and bays are so easy to grow it’s surprising they don’t feature in gardens more often.

Bay trees are tough and versatile. They can be grown as big trees, hedging or topiary specimens, or in pots, and they're supremely drought tolerant. 

Brisbane gardeners keen to try can check with local nurseries or make the trip down to Mudgeereeba to this place.

My own bay tree - a gift - endures almost criminal level of neglect and has more scales than a conservatorium of music. Despite this it cheerfully continues to produce thick strong leaves.

For that alone it deserves to be crowned with the laurel wreath of victory.

Bonus

According to The Witchipedia (a fascinating resource about which I was desperately unaware prior to researching this article) "bay leaves may be added to any spell or potion designed to enhance psychic ability and is [sic] a great addition to a psychic dream pillow."

It doesn't specify if adding the leaves to other liquids will also aid psychic ability, but if you do notice anything after eating your next bay-laced meal, please let us all know...

A is for Apple

It comes first in countless childhood alphabet books.

It can be found in every fruit shop in the world.

It has been painted by countless artists, some almost obsessively.

It’s the name given to celebrity children, and I’m even writing these words on one.

It’s ubiquitous, and yet it would be a grave mistake to think the apple boring.

Without the apple there would be no cider on a hot summer day, no apple pie on a cool autumn night, no apple sauce cosying up to succulent slices of roast pork.

How many types of apples can you name?

Image: The apple trees at an apple orchard at Kamimoku, Gunma, Japan by Kamimoku International Village via Wikimedia Commons.

Half a dozen? A dozen?

Apple expert Barrie Juniper reckons there are about 20,000 varieties in the world.

Over 6,000 have been recorded in Britain, yet during the 80s and 90s many observed with sadness the vast quantities of apples going to waste. Trees overhanging garden fences and footpaths yielded reliable crops that hung on branches unpicked, until they fell to the ground and rotted.

Farmers pulled up old trees in favour of crops that would win them a more handsome profit, or coveted supermarket contract. Many other orchards vanished under new houses, roads and neglect.

With Britain’s orchards reduced by two-thirds since 1960, centuries of local distinctiveness and rich variety were disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Saddling up their white chargers were Sue Clifford, Angela King and Roger Deakin. In 1983 the trio founded Common Ground, a charitable organisation that values and celebrates local distinctiveness.

In 1990 Common Ground launched Apple Day. Held on October 21 it has now become an annual event celebrating the diversity of Britain’s apples, and the associated landscapes and culture.

Welcome back cider, apple pie and apple sauce.

Good to see you again scrumpy, apple jelly, apple cider vinegar and calvados.

Find out more about Apple Day.

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From Kazakhstan to the world

Image: Bee in apple blossom by Fir0002 via Wikimedia Commons.

Roger Deakin’s chats with Barrie Juniper lead him on a journey to the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan, home of the wild apple from which all our domestic varieties developed.

“Kuraly sets off into the woods on horseback and returns like a bee to the hive with saddlebags full of wild apples. I wander up a steep path and sample some sweet feral fruit, slipping the pips into my trouser pocket for later planting in Suffolk.”

— Roger Deakin, Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, 2007, Penguin Books.

Baz had himself tracked down the wild apple, Malus sieversus, and untwirled its DNA, before mapping how he believed the fruit had spread from its Central Asian home.

You can read Roger Deakin’s journey to the wild apple orchards of Kasakhstan in his truly marvellous book Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees.

Barrie Juniper expanded on the origin of the apple in his book The Story of the Apple.

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One of the places where apples ended up was Tasmania, the so-called Apple Isle.

Tasmania’s apples came courtesy of no less than Captain Bligh himself, in the early 1770s. With a climate ideally suited the island soon found itself with a surplus of fruit, and these were exported to other colonial settlements in Australia.

Today apples are grown in six Australian states, with nine varieties under cultivation: Royal Gala, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Fuji, Pink Lady, Granny Smith, Jazz, Sundowner and Eve.

The traditional unit of weight for measuring apple quantities was the bushel. According to our good friends at Wikipedia, in 1912 the U.S. Court of Customs defined a “heaped bushel” for measuring quantities of apples as 2,747.715 cubic inches (45,035.04 cubic cm). 

Not sure I possess the mathematical facility required to be an apple producer...

We use tonnes in Australia these days. Less romantic, easier on the brain.

Image: Pink Lady, courtesy Aussie Apples.

All Queensland’s apples are grown in the Granite Belt region around Stanthorpe (Applethorpe is just down the road), which means that not many of us know the joy of an apple grown in our own garden.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t stop and given a little nod of thanks to the humble apple, a star amongst fruit, bringing delight to our table and our imaginations.

Image: Still Life with Seven Apples by Paul Cezanne, via Wikimedia Commons.

Bonus!

You made it through to the end. Now if you ever need to figure out if you've got more apples than oranges, Sherlock Holmes and The Count show you how on Sesame Street.