Apple fumble

Oh yes, this year I'll be getting my mits on a bumper crop, provided they don't all fall off the tree first and rot on the ground.

When I was young we had a cooking apple tree, and there was no worse task for pocket money than picking up the rotting diseased apples from the garden. The mouldy brown ones with white speckles that would disintegrate in your hands. We couldn't use gloves either so you had to pick them up by the stalk.

Yet I would devour apples as a child. Possibly the only fruit I would eat. I even ate Granny Smiths, getting a buzz from the moment the bittersweet, almost sherbet like fizz made the inside of your mouth shrivel up until it dissipated and you were left with the satisfying flesh and crisp skin.

Apples capture the imagination. We had a book called 'Apple Pigs' in which there were so many apples, the family had to find creative ways to use them all. Our version was well thumbed. It now goes on Amazon at hardback, used for £99.

But, with the exception of specialists, I wonder if most of us take them for granted? Have you ever eaten a nutty Russet ? Or do you buy Braeburns from the supermarket every week? Braeburns, the sneaky Kiwi fruit;  the grey squirrel of the apple world.

In my back garden I have a mature apple tree. So mature I thought it had given up fruiting last year. I only had two apples from the whole tree. Back in February I got busy and read up on how to reinvigorate this  fruit bearing beauty. I watched YouTube videos on pruning and gave it a healthy dose of zoo poo, which they love apparently.

I got up on the ladder with secateurs and a pruning saw, removed crossing branches, dead wood and got some light into the middle. I assiduously fed the soil, and woohoo, look! My tree has come alive:

And then, last week I was told "trees only fruit every other year"

Pruning my rose bush

I am.

I made friends for life at school, played football, got the grades, went to university.

I made friends for life at uni, played drinking games (safely mum, safely),  got the grades, went to London

I made friends for life in London, I rubbed shoulders with the political elite, partied in the deepest of underground holes and ate canapes and drank from the classiest towers. My work literally took me to the heights.

A one-off visit to the top of Canary Wharf

From the window on the other side

I then took on a new life out west - less glamour, less Tube, more responsibility. Yet still young. still man.

So what has happened? Out alone in the garden? No hangover. No to being social. What about all my friends for life? Surely I'm not ditching them?

Maybe it's the stubborn side of me. Having dead-headed the rose, I was desperate to then hold it up so that it didn't drop its petals over the soil I need for veg. And then I needed to cut it back to stop if going crazy growth. I wasn't going to stop until it was sorted.

Or perhaps, its the slow appreciation that comes with age (and evidence) that your body can't take the heavy nights out Friday after friday, activities weekend after weekend, along with day after day of work pressures.

I promise you it's nothing to do with helping the rose to flower it's gorgeous creamy white flowers with that wonderful sweet vanilla scent. No, this is a veg garden where the potatoes rule and flowers are purely practical. A concession to the reality of bees.

Real men prune