The Lengths to Which One Goes

You know you write historic fiction when you have to know both how to graft an apple tree correctly (you can't plant an apple seed and end up with the same apple variety as the fruit it came from, for instance) *and* that to keep a sickly apple tree well in the early 1600s required cutting open the bark to 'release the humours.'

Thank you, Thomas Hill, for The Arte of Gardening, 1608

And so the Tudor/Stuart section of the novel slowly (oh so slowly) is getting done. 

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