“Wild” apples are now in lush profusion here, crowding each other out on the branches of gnarly old trees from abandoned orchards and farms.
It seems that there are more apples than usual, which, some old-timers say, means a harsh winter.
Far from being the forbidden fruit that the Bible says was the downfall of Adam and Eve, apples are animal lifesavers around here; deer and other wildlife depend on them. (By the way, the Bible never identifies the forbidden fruit. Michelangelo depicted it as a fig, but the poet Milton, in Paradise Lost, decided it must be an apple, apparently based on an obscurity in the Latin version of the First Testament.)
Apple trees were brought to Maine in the 16th Century by European fisherman who planted them on the sea islands and shores where the men camped. Much of the apple crop that’s picked (and picked up) here now goes into cider presses.
(Brooklin, Maine)