Comfort Me With Apples

Apples do have special importance. In the damper countries they are the model of all fertility. The French and the Dutch call potatoes “Apples of the Earth,” a lovely phrase. In Italy and Russia, tomatoes are “Golden Apples” (some of the most delicious tomatoes I have ever eaten, bought from a Moscow market, had little golden flecks on their skin, which for the first time brought this expression to life for me). In our cool, squelchy country of meadows, bogs, moors, and low hills, we have no olive trees and precious few vines. The trees of life in the English landscape are apple trees.