The Weight of The Fruit

After two wet summers in which the little fruit produced by the one pear and two apple trees in our garden -- most of what didn't fall off when still unripe was pecked by birds and nibbled by squirrels -- we've done rather well this summer. So many apples, indeed, that we've had trouble keeping up: most of them have had to be processed into jam (where the pectin helps set the blackberries, gooseberries or elderberries with which they're mixed), and others are being stored in the refrigerator until they can be eaten (either on their own or chopped into the morning muesli). And now the pears are coming ripe, too....

So here's a couple of pictures, of branches bent low by the weight of their fruit. Once free, they should spring back up -- but even then I think we'll have to do some heavy-duty pruning, to get the trees back into the shape they're supposed to be. That's "minarette" shape, as in keeping short branches close to the trunk, but obviously our trees have failed to RTFM and are behaving like full-size trees. But we'll learn them!