Autumn

Ah, Autumn.

Season of wasps and mouldy fruitiness.

The apple tree was so promising in the spring, covered in pinky-white blossom so feminine it was almost embarrassing. And then at June the little apples were so  perfect, so full of potential.

And now, most of them are all over the floor, half-green and half-mouldy-brown. Not the russet beauty you see in a picture. Not the shiny waxy green of a Tesco Fruit and Veg display, safely tucked away in polythene. A waste and disappointment. Only good for wasps and woodlice.

But the goodness in the leaves is already drawing back into the plant, to drive the roots deeper into the soil through the winter. The buds are already swelling for next year's flowers.

The promise is there. One day, one day it will be right.

One day.

The Wild World of Apples

To you, it's just an apple core you've thrown out the window.
People do it all the time - apple cores aren't "really" litter, they biodegrade. Wasps and birds eat them. That's the theory.

I'm saying nothing.

But the unintended consequences are amazing.

Drive down most trunk roads, keep your eyes open at this time of year. Apples all the way down the verges.

Not apples you buy in the shops. These are real apples. Wild apples.

No apple pip grows to type. They're a genetic mixture. You plant a pip from an Ashmead's Kernel, you've no way of knowing what you've got. Could be the world's best dessert apple. Could be a perfect cider apple. Could be a crab. Could just be an inferior version of what was thrown out the window.  You never know.

There's a lovely cooker near our spinney. I've no idea how it got there. It was thrown out of the window in a core one day, I daresay. And it grew. We never noticed it. At least, I say "we". I never did. It must be twenty years old now. I'm the only one left from the spinney in those days. But it quietly grew on the verge, no fuss - just an inch or two, then a foot, then spreading. Then gradually - for wild apples aren't grafted onto fast-fruiting rootstocks like tame ones - gradually it would have fruited. It's a lovely cooker now. But nobody ever picks them. Apart from that maniac who comes round now and then to grab spare apples for cider.
But the birds eat them. And the wasps. And, when they fall, sometimes the rabbits.

It's a goldmine out there - all the way down the roadsides of the country.  The genetically most perfect apples you could ever find is going to be out there somewhere.  And nobody ever knows. Nobody ever knows.