March 11th is Johnny Appleseed day. There is also a Johnny Appleseed day on September 26. They say he was born on September 26, and died on March 11. But planting season begins in March, so we’ll celebrate and plant this blog in March.
Have the book “Johnny Appleseed” by Eleanor Atkinson, 1943. John Chapman is the hero of this book. It is an old book first printed in 1915, my reprint is 1943. This is a wonderful telling of the tale of Johnny Appleseed, some truth, some legend, but all wonderfully written. Take an evening or two and re-immerse yourself back to the days of this wandering nomad, as he started in Pittsburg, and made his way through Ohio and Indiana planting orchards of apple trees. He preached a little, and led an uplifting vagabond life.
Also have the book “Johnny Walnutseed, and Growing Black Walnut” by J.M. Sloan, 1979. According to the author, this book is first about another tree grower, “Bob Daubendiek, who pioneered the growing of Black Walnut, ‘the Cadillac of the trees,’ and his love of the land; and second, a detailed guide to growing the black walnut as a veneer-grade tree.” For several years in the 1960’s, Daubeniek was selling over a million Black Walnut seedlings a year, mainly in Iowa. This is an interesting book first for his story, and then about Black Walnuts in general, and how to grow them.
The next two books are because of National Button Week-March 11th to 18th. “A classification of Pearl and Shell Buttons” by Margaret F. Kelso, published by the National Button Society, 1971. The other is “The button Sampler”, by Lillian Smith Albert, and Jane Ford Adams, 1951. These two books help describe types of buttons for those who collect them.
Who would collect buttons? Well, I happen to have a container that has buttons from both my mom and my mother-in-law. There are some great odd and old buttons in the box. One of my books is strictly about pearl and shell buttons. And in front of the box, is a ‘blank’ cut from a mollusk.
I took my mom for a trip to Muscatine, Iowa, to see the National Pearl Button Museum. That small town on the Mississippi river, was once the button capital of the world, in the early 1900’s. We were able to walk through some of the machinery that punched out buttons from mollusk shells. That is where I got the ‘blank’, before it would be polished on both sides and holes drilled for sewing to fabric. It was amazing to first see all of the machines in just one museum building, and then when it was pointed out there was a whole street of such buildings, the sense of enormity was breathtaking. They made a lot of buttons. In 1898, it was said that Muscatine produced 138,615,696 buttons.
I loved taking Mom on such adventures. While I may have “pushed her buttons”, she never told me to “zip it”. And of course for Johnny A, what is worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm.
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