Aug 20th, 2014

Author: donich_admin

How do you like them apples?

One of the apple trees in our garden is loaded with fruit which look ready, so this afternoon I picked one to try it.

Not sure what variety it is but it has a crisp white flesh and a red skin, and it was in fact ready. I cut it in half and gave half to R who regarded it with great suspicion and examined it closely for potential bugs before deigning to eat it (in fact apples and raisins are about the only fruit he will eat). I gently pointed out that the ones from the supermarkets come off trees as well – to which his rejoinder was that ‘Supermarkets spray their stuff with so much crap that creepy crawlies wouldn’t come near them’. I’ll try to take that as a compliment to our organic garden produce….

We have another tree of eaters and two trees of cookers to come – though one of the latter only has about 3 fruit on it. There is also an abandoned orchard on the path to Ardentinny where I will see if I can pick some more. It’s a sad reflection on modern times that when I was a child anything vaguely edible growing in the hedgerow was stripped by children and consumed even before it was properly ripe – but now no one seems to even touch it. I don’t know whether it is just that children today have so much rubbish to eat easily accessible to them that they don’t bother with fruit and nuts – or whether there is just a lack of knowledge or interest that the stuff is there.