This Year's Crop

We planted fruit trees in our garden in the first couple of years we were here -- a cherry tree, a redcurrant bush, three apple trees, a pear tree and a plum. The plum died almost instantly; the redcurrant succumbed to woolly moth after a few years and had to be dug out and burned; one of the three apple trees took years to produce its first flowers and for years afterwards never gave us more than a couple of fruits, so was eventually dug out as well; the cherry produced lots of fruit every year but was generally stripped bare by the birds before we got anything, so that eventually went as well. That has left us with two apples and one pear tree, plus a blackcurrant bush purchased later and inserted into a likely-seeming gap, and a blackberry bramble which The Wugster introduced and which we have to keep severely under control lest it take over one whole side of the garden.

So that's round about fifteen years that we've been growing fruit in one form or another, and for most of those fifteen years we've never got very much -- the blackcurrant and the blackberry are fairly reliable, but the apple and pear trees generally crop poorly. They give us lots of blossom in the spring, but then seem to lose a good half of their buds in the "June drop" while those remaining are either nibbled by squirrels or invaded by coddling moths. Most of the time, the fruit is boiled for its pectin, used to help jam set; we seem to eat very little of the fruit as fruit.

Except this year. This year, for what must be the first time ever, we have a bumper crop of apples and pears -- fruit which looks as though it's staying on the trees to ripen, which is not being pecked or nibbled or attacked, which is starting to give me the lunch I take to work every day. Here's some photographs:




Our tomatoes are also doing rather well -- there's a lot of green fruit at the moment, because the weather's been rather cool and damp, but those in the greenhouse are starting to turn and soon those outside will follow. Ace!