D8, Western Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar, and Deer in Capitol Reef National Park

Last week I went down to Capitol Reef National Park with a group from church. And I woke up to five deer browsing in our campsite. Here are two of them.

On Friday I went to a family reunion in Provo Canyon and W found a caterpillar, which, by googling "green caterpillar with fake eyes," I've been able to identify as a Western Tiger Swallowtail. I wonder if this type of caterpillar would be up for feeding on pawpaw leaves? It's not the Zebra Swallowtail, which feeds only on pawpaw leaves.

After W did me the favor of letting me take some pics, he ran off and let it go.

It was also sometime around early last week or late the previous week that I noticed D8 was emerging, belatedly. That brings this batch of 20 seeds up to a 75% germination rate. We'll see how D8 does though, since it won't have all that much longer to grow before it starts getting cold.

What is a Windfall?

As you know from the previous blog post, I was out putting organic fertilizer on the pawpaw trees and found a windfall.

Windfall is such an intriguing word. Miriam-Webster offers two definitions:
1. something (as a tree or fruit) blown down by the wind
2. an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage

The Oxford English Dictionary gives some enlightening historical sentences that use the term according to Miriam-Webster's first definition:

1661   M. Stevenson Twelve Moneths 42   The wind begins to bluster among the Apples,..and the wind-falls are gathered to fill the Pies for the houshold.

1705   E. Ward Hudibras Redivivus I. ii. 17   The grizly Boar is hunting round; To see what Windfals may be found.

And then the Oxford English Dictionary gives some nice historical sentences that use the term according to the second definition:

1603   P. Holland tr. Plutarch Morals 1237   This man..who otherwise before-time was but poore and needy, by these windfalles and unexpected cheats became very wealthy.

1801   M. Edgeworth Forester in Moral Tales I. 190   He..kept little windfalls, that came to him by the negligence of customers—tooth-pick cases, loose silver.

Windfall's emergence as an "unexpected, unearned, or sudden advantage" orients us in the English language according to a certain perspective--not the perspective of the owner of the orchard but the perspective of the one who wants the fruit from the orchard but doesn't own it. The 1661 usage of the term, which has the the windfall apples gathered to make pies isn't really all that great for the owner of the orchard. If the apples had just stayed on the trees until picked, they could be used for anything, but since the windfalls have fallen before picking, they're only good to make pies (no offense to reader who like pies). As Robert Frost says in "After Apple-Picking": "For all / That struck the earth, / No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, / Went surely to the cider-apple heap / As of no worth." So, before the apples fell, they were pluripotent, like stem cells, and could become any number of things that could be of advantage to the owner of the orchard, if the owner had only beaten the wind to them. But now they're good for one thing--pies (if you're Plutarch) or cider (if you're Frost). That's the perspective of the owner of the orchard.

But the "grizly boar" isn't the owner of the orchard, as he hunts around to see what windfalls may be found. He walks on four legs and can't get to the fruit up in the tree. He counts on the windfalls, lives on them. So while the owner dreads the windfalls, those who don't own but walk through or past the orchard hope for them. And for centuries the non-owners who walk through the orchard or vineyard have had a traditional right to glean or to pick up the windfalls. Leviticus 19:9-10 gives this command to the owner: "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger." This ethics of leaving the windfall for the poor and the stranger has been a part of US and European culture. Consider the well-known (and formerly more popular) painting The Gleaners (1857) by Jean-Francois Millet.

So we have the figurative meaning of windfall, not from the owner's standpoint but from the standpoint of the poor and the stranger: "an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage." Of course, it's great that the command to the owner is to leave the windfall for the poor and the stranger. That's usually asking owners to do more than they feel comfortable with. "I could make some good pies or cider with those windfalls," they say under their breath as they suppress the fist they want to shake skyward. And then you imagine the poor and the strangers, hoping and praying for wind, knowing that wind--strong wind--may be the only way the owners are bound to part with their fruit. It would be best if owners didn't need the wind as the gauge for whether they ought to share with the poor and the stranger. But this is where we get the figurative definition of windfall, permitting someone to scrimp by on (as the 1801 sentence says) windfalls of toothpick cases and loose silver.  

No doubt I'm talking about much more than fruit, and the literal practice of gleaning has fallen by the wayside in a lot of places. Good thing no gleaners came by the pawpaw trees yesterday evening before I had picked up the windfall. A green pawpaw is inedible, and I imagine poisonous (at least, if the leaves and bark are any indication). Whereas a fallen apple may be good for nothing but the cider heap, this fallen pawpaw (fallen about a month and a half before its time) was good for nothing but dissecting at the kitchen table. 

I smelled the windfall after I opened it, and it had almost nothing that resembled the smell of a ripe pawpaw, except for a vague yeasty smell that is present but not prominent in a ripe pawpaw.

I was interested to see the seeds, so brown-black in a ripe pawpaw. And here they're white or pale yellow. And one of them was cut in half during the dissection.

I gravitated toward the dissected seed, since its innards looked so gelatinous, yet there was a structure to its innards, as if it were some type of insect egg or alien cocoon.

Then I started working on extracting the seeds so I could get a better look at the paleness of their yellowness.

What is a windfall? I've dissected it culturally and physically for you.

Fertilizer and a Windfall

This evening after going out for a burger at Burger Supreme, I went with my brother and dad to pick up a couple items. First, a new water filter for when I'm hiking, since my old one recently broke. And second some fertilizer with calcium in it, like Sheri Crabtree suggested, to see if that will have any effect on the leaf curl issues on the Wells and Shenandoah.

I got some fertilizer that's got bone meal, feather meal, and processed manure in it. The bag advertised it as especially for vegetables and tomatoes, but it was the only type that had calcium that I could see, So I bought it and spread it: instructions said 1 cup for every ten square feet, for tomatoes. I'm hoping that what's good for the tomato is good for the pawpaw.

I spread it

And spread it

And then I saw it--the windfall. The piece of fruit that had fallen from the Shenandoah in the wind.

I froze

And then approached

This one was smaller than most of the pawpaws on the Shenandoah, so it's no great loss.

Then I looked over at the horizon and sunset,

The water (from the hose as I watered the pawpaws) glowed red on the pavement

Things would be okay.

Pawpaw Clusters: Mid-July

Still catching things up after the trip to Germany. Here are some pics of where the fruit clusters (and a few singletons) are at.

This is the Wells' best cluster

The Shenandoah

The Shenandoah

KSU-Atwood

KSU-Atwood

KSU-Atwood

KSU-Atwood

Pawpaw Seedlings: Curly Q and D6

Like I say, I just got back from Germany for a week so have been catching up with what's going on with the pawpaws, including the seedlings. My parents kept them for the week we were gone. You'll see they've leafed out quite a bit.

Interesting to see this one (officially C3 but less formally Curly Q), which had a hard time getting its head out of the ground, now leafing out, but still with the notable effects of having formerly having its head stuck in the ground.

While I was gone, another seed germinated and leafed out, D6. I don't imagine I'll be seeing any more seeds germinate this year, so this is how things stand: 14/20 seeds successfully germinating. That's a rate of 70%. Not as good a rate as G. Matt Davies (Prof of Soil and Plant Community Restoration) at The Ohio State University recently tweeted about: he achieved a germination rate of 100%. But I'm not a professor of soil and plant community restoration, so I'll take 70%, especially for my first try.