The champagne has been popped (all over Derek, as it happened), the grand moving of the kitchen has occurred, and we’re now using New Nethergrove. Downstairs there’s a big shared kitchen, boot room (with very organised freezers), sun room, and wet room. Upstairs are three bedrooms and a bathroom, and is the realm of me and Sam. However, this still isn’t a post about New Nethergrove, and there are no pictures of it, because it still doesn’t seem like the right time yet. The courtyard is still a bomb site, the chapel and porch have no roof, and the farmhouse has been denuded. Actually I will show you a picture of that, because it’s quite interesting…
But that’s all you’re getting for now. Instead, this is a post about Autumn.
The swallows are all gone. In their place we have jackdaws, which this morning were establishing their winter pecking order through an aerial combat tournament. When the whole clattering (which is the collective noun for jackdaws – good to know) hurtled after the one whose turn it was to be the leader, I thought for a moment that they’d rootled out a small black buzzard that had camouflaged itself to hide from farmers with licences to kill. But no, it was all part of the show. What professionals!
Sam has to leave for work at about 7am, so when I have a day off and she’s at work I find myself up at 6 with the best part of the day in front of me, the part of it that’s usually hidden behind duvets and showers and the wheel of my car. Now as I’m typing this the weather is kind of grey and almost murky, but when the sun came up at 6:45 there was hardly a cloud in the sky, a deep layer of dew sparkling on the grass, and the air smelled of autumn.
I’m kind of cheating about the air smelling of autumn, because for me the smell of autumn is cold apples, dew, and distant fried bacon. And I fried the bacon myself, because I’m the best husband ever. But the apples and dew were all natural. Which leads me onto what this post is actually about, if I ever get round to it.
Apples! The Nethergrove Apples are just getting ripe, and it’s a perfect time to admire their beauty and variety. Here they are:
The Role Call of Apples. Starting at the left we have Nethergrove Seedling (I think, I’m always a bit hazy about which one we mean by Nethergrove Seedling…), which grows on the slopey lawn in front of the new kitchen. Then there’s a small eater from the orchard, followed by a big cooker from the orchard. Then there’s my favourite, which grows to the left of the polytunnel, and is another contender for the moniker ‘Nethergrove Seedling’. Next is the really red one, then the one we’ve got loads of, both of which grow to the right of the polytunnel. Beside that is a russet, then a Cox’s Orange Pippin which was given to me as a wedding present and grows near the chickens. The last one’s a pear. You’ll notice I’m not very good with apple varieties, and also not very original when it comes to naming things. Here they are in all their glory.
This isn’t all there is. There are quite a few different cooking apples, but they all look pretty similar really and there wasn’t much space left in the line. Also there’s a quince, which is beautiful and smells of pear drops, but isn’t ripe yet. And there are three cider varieties too, but I took their fruit off them this spring because they were struggling. And there’s a whole generation of trees that Steve grafted, most of which are repeats. When we make apple juice we just throw them all in together and it seems to balance out nicely, but cider’s still a no-no until the cider trees are up and running.
So you’d think it’s been a generally good year for apples and pears. But look at this:
That’s canker, which is caused by a fungal infection, and it’s all over the place this year. Almost all the trees are somewhat susceptible, and some are very vulnerable to it. Nethergrove Seedling has got dead wands sticking up all over it. I’ll have to remove all the affected branches and burn them, which will be quite a challenge, especially at the top of the trees. But looking at these trees with their dead sticks all over them and their living sticks weighed down with apples made me wonder if the canker is doing a kind of natural pruning, and maybe the good apple yield is connected to the stress of the disease. Perhaps. But if it’s this bad next year we’ll have dead trees, so I’m not going to rely on fungal pruning. Although, the trees are most vulnerable where they’ve been pruned, so it’s swings and roundabouts really.
Final update: who benefits most from all these apples? Rhubarb and Custard, that’s who!
Nethergrove Community 