Apple Harvest

It has been an amazing Summer this year. With all the rain from last year making the foliage lush, and days of uninterrupted sunshine in late June and all of July, the apple harvest has been phenominal.
 Since we moved here two years ago, we have been systematically but conservatively pruning the overgrown fruit trees at the end of our very long garden.  We were not at all confident of the outcome....possibly reflected in the lone apple I put on this number plaque earlier in the year (Made at a potter friend's house)

The beehive is romanticised....perhaps one day Mark will make one for me like that.

However, our poor elderly Bramley trees were no exception to the national bounty.  Anna, Mark and I had a fun two hours picking them all.

Anna in her favourite habitat - up a tree.  I still need to prune for height, having done the untangling and removal of dead stuff the past two years.  I mean on the tree, of course....not Anna.

Mark kept a running total of weight - but we've forgotten what it all came to probably about 60lbs though.

 Sooty had fun pretending to be an apple. As Anna and Mark picked I chose the best ones to wrap up in newspaper for storage. I kept packing them around Sooty till he finally got the hint....

 

 

 

 

 

I blend in rather well, don't you think?

Even the little £3 Aldi Cox's Orange Pippin tree that I have had stuffed in a tomato pot for 3 years produced its first fruit - 18 lovely apples. And most delicious they were too.

Size was a little.....variable.

This year we need to hack back some of the overgrown shrubs around the 'Orchard' at the end to allow more light in to the trees.  I am hopeful that even the Victoria Plum will survive my ministrations and produce well next year - we had a few handfuls of scrumptious plams despite the tree looking most unhappy after a good haircut last autumn.