Old apples

The old apples were planted here between seventy five and hundred and fifty years ago. Some of them may be wild, but most of the trees look like they were grown from grafts, and most are planted in patterns. We haven't identified many, but we have an idea about general types.

We have Gravenstein, Alexander, and several kinds of Greening apples. Maybe we have a Dudley Winter or North Star, a Newtown Pippin, and an Ashmead's Kernel. Almost certainly we have a Golden Russet and a Maiden's Blush. And maybe -- just maybe -- we have a Cox's Orange Pippin, though it may be wishful thinking.

Lacking their real names, we make up names for them anyway: Fish House, Short Cut, Three Sisters.

If I pay enough attention to these apples -- their shapes and sizes, their stems, their lenticels, their streaks, their russetting and all the other wonderful aspects of apples that I never knew a thing about before last fall, I will come to know them over the years, even if I don't learn their names.