hello
8/3 Today we picked the white apples. They have skins the color of old yellowed bones, and translucent flesh so that when you slice them open you can see the seeds through the flesh. Bone-and-glass apples, parchment apples, ghost apples.
They bruise easily, a purplish brown rather too similar to a bruise on human skin. If you pick one up, there’s a good chance the shapes of your fingertips will be marked on it the next day. I want to try writing words on them by pressing on them with a pencil eraser sometime.
They smell very faintly of perfume, maybe roses. They do not smell like apples. Apple maggots never infest them (probably because their growing time is too short to support the apple maggot fly life cycle. It’ll be another month or two before the rest of our apples are ripe).
They’re lovely. They are also disgusting. Mealy and soft, with no flavor whatsoever. They’re not sweet. They’re not even sour. It’s like a mouth full of wet cotton ball. I’m pretty sure I spit it out the first time I tried one.
I hope you all understand how weird this is: even the goats are reluctant to eat them. They’ll eat an apple or two, but then they lose interest (except in keeping the sheep from eating any, of course).
I have no idea why a previous resident planted the ghost-apple tree. If they have any flavor at all, only the restless dead can taste it.
I have to say, I’ve seen, researched, and planted a lot of apples in my time, but I have never seen anything like this.
My best guess is that your tree is a chance seedling with a genetic mutation, given that it is both leucistic/albinoid and early-ripening. I’d hazard a guess it’s also polyploid.
lazyevaluationranch: If you’re able to save some scion wood next Autumn, I’d be very interested in grafting a branch or two of this to one of my trees: not for the utility of it, so much as for the novelty and breeding possibilities.
A little added info: It could be a variety of Potter County White Transparent. From the heritage apple site:
White Transparent, Ghost or Spirit Apple, or Apples of Saint Peter. The Russian Petrovka group are all thin-skinned pale apples that ripen near the feast of Saint Peter, and are offered to Widows and orphans (first fruits) or to the graves of the recent dead of the winter, representing God’s Mercy after trial. Apple associated with Baba Yaga, and with foretelling the past or the future. This Transparent is from Coudersport, Pennsylvania, likely brought as seed with Russian immigrants.
Holy shit…
The White Transparent breed is a pie/cooking apple, that’s why it has a mealy and hard texture. You’re not supposed to just bite into it like a Honey Crisp! And yeah, they’re famous for bruising a lot. Not a first choice for most apple growers
natalie portman radiates such a terrifying energy i can’t describe it….. it’s not exactly evil but it’s not warm either…. i feel like she could unhinge her jaw and drag me into the ocean like a kraken but she wouldn’t bc it’s undignified
Wanna know why?
“Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman told the crowd at Saturday’s Women’s March in downtown Los Angeles that she experienced what she calls “sexual terrorism” as a 13-year-old after the release of the film The Professional.
Portman described her pride and excitement in releasing the film, only to encounter sexually explicit messages both directed toward her and made about her.
”I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me,” she recalled. “A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday, euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with. Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews.”
The experience, she said, changed the way she expressed herself publicly, in order to limit the ways she could be objectified by others.
”I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually, I would feel unsafe,” she said. “And that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort. So I quickly adjusted my behavior. I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene and talked about that choice deliberately in interviews. I emphasized how bookish I was and how serious I was. And I cultivated an elegant way of dressing. I built a reputation for basically being prudish, conservative, nerdy, serious, in an attempt to feel that my body was safe and that my voice would be listened to.”
Video of the speech here: https://www.vox.com/2018/1/21/16917130/natalie-portman-womens-march
I support Natalie Portman unhinging her jaw and dragging every last man who made her feel this way into the deep like a kraken.
via reddit.com
here’s a new ideological movement for you: internet iconoclasm
- stop putting random internet people on pedestals because they’re funny or quirky or for any reason at all actually
- self examine and self criticize: are you putting too much stock in parasocial internet relationships? are you being mindful of the humanity of others?
- never lay down your pride to defend someone you’ve never even talked to
- remember that the person and the persona can be very different
- if an online celebrity or influencer deserves to be torn down, then let them be torn down.
“The body has been made so problematic for women that it has often seemed easier to shrug it off and travel as a disembodied spirit.”— Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, excerpted in Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry, ed. Sandra M. Gilbert.
we should get together and have a seminar on the differences between being conceited and being confident. a confident person says “I am beautiful!” a conceited person says “I am the most beautiful.” a confident person says “I am a hard worker” a conceited person says “I am the hardest worker” a confident person says “I am kind” and conceited person says “fuck everybody but me” people run around calling eachother conceited for being comfortable in their skin. friendly reminder: your low self esteem is your problem not random strangers fault & you can’t find ur way to self love through destruction. comparison is the enemy of progress 🤷🏾♀️
