Appaloosa

After weeks of not posting, I have so much to show and tell that I have to break it down into two entries.

First, the apple progress. The two apple seeds that I put in the soil are, like the peach and cherry pits, unresponsive. I am not sure whether they are even alive but, nevertheless, I will be patient. Sometimes seeds sprout really late.
On the bright side, the apple that germinated is thriving. I took a picture of it every day for the past 3 weeks, and compiled the pictures into two animations. The first one is from the past 18 days, and the second one is from the past 13 days.

I came to a realization about apples a few months ago (when I got the apple seeds) that I'd like to share. I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan back then, and observed two things about the city. First, I was told that the city used to have apples that were legendary in size, color, and scent. An old lady described two apples as weighing a kilogram (about one pound per apple), with a scent that was strong enough to make the entire apartment smell like apples. (Sadly, the apple trees were all cut down during the city's expansion). Second, the area is known for its horses. The entire culture is based on them, and, not surprisingly, the people were the first in the world to domesticate them. So, what do horses and apples have to do with each other? Here's the logic: Horses like to eat apples because they are high in energy and horses like to run. Apples, like all plants, like to occupy as much space as possible, and therefore prefer to be spread out. Apple seeds survive and, in fact, germinate more easily when they pass through horses' digestive systems. We have a fantastic symbiotic relationship. Apple trees produce apples that are large and easy to spot, and horses eat them and spread their seeds far and wide. In time, the horses spread apple seeds from apples that are larger, brighter, and stronger in scent, eventually causing Almaty to have legendary apples.

I would like to bring back the Almaty apple. Unfortunately, since it takes at least ten years for apple trees to start producing fruit, breeding such an apple would take a lifetime. The bright side of this is that, as I will talk about in the next entry, I recently came to the realization that plants' offspring can be pretty different from one another. This variation would mean fewer steps in breeding apple trees, making the legendary apple closer to hand.