Maudslay: The Return

Now that the weather is warming up again, I've restarted my weekly weekend walks at Maudslay State Park. On my most recent trip, I took more of an interest in two things I've been curious about several times before, but never followed up on. The first is the tree you see in the middle picture, which is in the formal walled garden at the park. Late last fall, I noticed that this tree had fruit growing on it (they looked like apples). It seemed like an awfully strange and interesting way to grow a tree, though. Well I looked it up, and apparently this technique dates all the way back to trying to grow fruit within the walls of castles, in a very limited space. The technique is called "espalier" - here is a link to the wiki article. The other interesting thing is the round stone you see in the third photo (forgive me for the terrible quality of that one). I'd always suspected it was a millstone, but I wasn't sure. Well I looked that up, too. It is in fact a millstone - a runner stone, to be precise. Based on what I read in this article, it looks like this particular stone has a "quarter dress" pattern. It makes me wonder how it ended up here, out in the woods at the park. The park is right on the river - I wonder if there was a mill here once upon a time?

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