There's a lot to recommend September. Days still warm enough to spend outside but nights cool enough for blankets and pyjamas. An abundance of blackberries, damsons and wild plums for crumbles and jellies. The start of the academic year suggesting new beginnings in a way that Spring can't. We doze through summer's long languorous sleep and the first cold draught under the door awakens us eager and ravenous for new beginnings!
September's greatest delight is the sudden appearance of enormous rosy fruit, implausibly balanced on the gnarled branch of every apple tree. Mid September briefly brings my favourite Worcester Pearmain apples to the shops. Worcesters are an early fruiting English variety, a parent of the ubiquitous Discovery apple. A good Worcester will release a pungent fruity smell, and their delicate green and red colouring is divine. They are supposed to taste a little of strawberries, but to me they are just irresistibly apple-y, as if Willie Wonka had a hand in their creation.
I planted an Worcester Pearmain tree in the garden of my first house. The garden was depressing and horribly overlooked, a typical tiny green patch on a modern estate. A couple of apple trees and a reclaimed brick patio replaced the existing ghastly blue pergola and suddenly the space felt full of promise. Unfulfilled promise as it turned out. I didn't live there long enough to taste the Worcesters and every September I wonder who might be enjoying my lovely apples.
No comments:
Post a Comment