A Living Magazine - Day 44 - Apples, Roses and Fuzzy Mothers

Good sleep! Five full hours. I felt better. I was on my way quickly. 

The Commercial Street walk west was becoming a nice routine each morning. Besides being all down hill, it goes right by a community garden...

Community Garden Guard Kitty.

I stopped by the cemetery again this morning to finally address my ripped backpack straps and the foam that had become mangled. My "Early Morning Office and Workshop"...

I had an abundance of paperclips from my glasses repair. And, of course, the multitool pliers could bend anything. I decided to stitch the straps back with paperclips. It worked very well, and I may reinforce the entirety of both straps in this way.

And now, not for the squeamish!, I present extreme close-ups of the surgical results...  

Then came the clean-up of the  blue foam pads. Yes, and thank you to the duct tape gods!

And finally, a tighter hold on the stick...

The difference after the strap repairs was significant. The pack was tightly against my back, with the sleeping bag pocket resting on my lower back. The straps were shortened, and the pads protected my collar bone, while letting my shoulder muscles have the space to work. Then I tied up some hanging strap material. The set-up looked freakin' shahp, bub!

Salem Eye Care Center

Here is a perfect example of the spiders around here. They are by FAR the dominant species. That also means there must be enormous amounts of bugs...

She is resting.

Got to the library and discovered it was closed on Mondays. I knew - or thought - I could walk across town and visit the Oregon State Library. I walked through the courtyard of the closed public library and snapped some shots...

This is some kind of giant sundial. At noon the

medium sized wedge on the left casts no shadow.

From the Peace Exhibit...

I did not treat this with a filter. It is a plate on the wall that has

an iridescent ability to show all shades of blue,

with the sky showing up as yellow. Peaceful, indeed...

Over the years, organizations have donated money and had laser-sketched, stainless steal plates adhered to the wall around the big posters (shown above)...

I turned around and noticed there was a good angle to capture the library entrance...

These white beauties graced the edges of the exhibit.

On the other side were more plates...

Here is a close up of the detail in the wall mural I posted yesterday...

APPLES AND ROSES

THE FRUIT OF DIVERSIFIED UNITY

If you haven't had the pleasure of seeing some major connections in nature, as well as how plants evolve - almost consciously - to exploit US, or at least work with us , I would highly recommend Michael Pollan's, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. He has a conversational style a bit like my own, and makes a compelling argument (choosing four plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes) for just how humans and plants may really interact. Also, watch the episodes on PBS based on the book.

His account of the history of apples (which are in the rose family, Rosacaea) blew me away. I never had any idea just what a flexible plant the apple is and has been. He also unravels the legend of Johnny Appleseed.

Without getting too far into it, let me just summarize a bit. Apples are an old world plant. They probably did not occur in the way we stereotypically think of them very often--large, round, red, for example. The apple seed is always a mutation of its host plant's genes. ALL apples you eat from a store, have been cultivars - ONLY grown intentionally by humans, and not existing in wild form - for hundreds of years. When any apple with mature seeds drops to the ground and has its seeds germinate, the resulting plant may or may not have characteristic of its parent. In essence every new sprout is a new variety. Therefore, to obtain consistency, any apple tree trunk can serve as a root stock for grafting any variety of already-existing apple.

Before humans got involved, the diversity of varieties must have been staggering. On this day, his information came back to me in an experiential way. The Bush Family had pastures with different kinds of natural apple trees growing on them. The apples' descendants exist now in about 10 very different forms. Here is my casual study of a few of them...

Hard, green, gritty, sweet and bitter, fully developed seeds, with a 2.5" diameter.

Tiny, tart, sweet, undeveloped edible seeds, with a 3/8" diameter.

Tiny, bitter, not sweet, undeveloped edible seeds, with a 3/8" diameter.

Hard, red, oblong, sweet and sour, undeveloped seeds, with a 1/2" diameter.

Medium-soft, thin skinned, sour, and somewhat sweet, with a 2" diameter.

Hard, green, gritty, tasteless, a hint of bitter, with a 2.5" diameter.

Red sour and sweet, undeveloped edible seeds, with a 3/4" diameter.

Hard, tart, developed seeds, with a 3" diameter.

Undeveloped pear.

Very much like a Macintosh, harder and more sour.

Samples from the trees above.

The very hard, unripe pear.

Inside one.

Inside another.

Inside another.

The last time I'd been to this park I saw signs for a rose garden, but didn't have time to find it. Now I wanted to see it, and it was actually easy to locate. Once you understand the relationship between apples and roses, visiting roses right after apples gives a kind of connectedness to the two species...

An unripe rose hip. It will be red when it ripens and will taste like an apple.

All roses (petals and hips) are edible.

Then I did my best to capture the very best examples of many varieties of roses. (Readers of this blog have my permission to use these photos in any way they'd like. Please just attribute them properly.)...

I took a rest and just soaked up the morning light. I really liked that there were more benches than anyone would ever use in this town. Everyone says hello, waves or nods, almost without exception. Various people passed. A woman with a small inquisitive dog. A young guy looking for weed, followed by another young guy who offered to smoke some. I didn't, but I pointed him toward the last guy. They met up and shared a wake-n-bake.

After a nice rest, I started toward the other library and ended up walking down Winter Street and through a hospital complex, with a fresh veggie market...

There was a small river next to the hospital...

Neat! A Moon Tree!

The other library was a bit of a frustrating prospect. There were only specialized areas, not for general study. I huffed and puffed and then just smiled. There was always Starbuck's. I'd have to buy something and the funds were almost gone. But, it would be worth getting my work done and charging the laptop. On the way diagonally across town to Starbuck's, I passed back by the muskrat Reflection Pond I'd seen the day before, and went looking for the little critters. Wasn't hard to find the mother and baby...

Momma, I like to smell your butt!

Here's and itch, oh, and here... and here...

Now let's take a swim right back to where we were!

These two are always together. They show great affection for each other and seem to enjoy each day, swimming eating grass and water plants, cleaning and snuggling. I guess Salemites take these guys for granted, but I could have sat right down and watched them all afternoon.

I passed back under the bridge and did some trolling...

Ripe rose hips. Split them, clean out the seeds and enjoy (tastes like apple)!

Starbuck's worked out great! I got the post up and charged the laptop to about 50%, before heading back to Bush's--now my favorite hang-out spot...

I sat there and worked on my still-yet-unpublished essay so long that the battery ended up dying again. But, before it did, I took one last photo of the golden sunset. The beautiful end to a satisfying day.

I eventually got back to the sleep spot and fell asleep without the sleeping bag, until about 1:00 am, when I pulled it out and slipped inside, resting very comfortably. I was happy.