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Flashes Of Memory
Apr. 9th, 2019 08:52 amI grew up around fruit trees.
Our house was at the bottom of a valley and the garden was a long narrow strip that stretched up the hill to the wood on the upper slopes. It was arranged in steps. The first two steps were lawns- one of them with an apple tree at either end- and the third was an patch of rough grass we called The Orchard- with apple, pear and plum. I don't know how many trees there were- probably fewer than my memory insists. Let me take a guess. Eight? Possibly ten? It may only have been six. Still, six trees in a confined space makes for a branchy, enchanted, Arthur Rackhamy space.
My mother bottled the fruit and made jam. Surplus apples were stored on racks in the Anderson Shelter in the back yard- which was a fairy house buried under an artificial hill with a laburnum planted on top. It was one of many places I found uncanny- so I didn't go in there much even though it smelled wonderful. It was dark and poky and if you touched the walls or ceiling you brought down dirty cobwebs and flakes of white paint.
Our house was at the bottom of a valley and the garden was a long narrow strip that stretched up the hill to the wood on the upper slopes. It was arranged in steps. The first two steps were lawns- one of them with an apple tree at either end- and the third was an patch of rough grass we called The Orchard- with apple, pear and plum. I don't know how many trees there were- probably fewer than my memory insists. Let me take a guess. Eight? Possibly ten? It may only have been six. Still, six trees in a confined space makes for a branchy, enchanted, Arthur Rackhamy space.
My mother bottled the fruit and made jam. Surplus apples were stored on racks in the Anderson Shelter in the back yard- which was a fairy house buried under an artificial hill with a laburnum planted on top. It was one of many places I found uncanny- so I didn't go in there much even though it smelled wonderful. It was dark and poky and if you touched the walls or ceiling you brought down dirty cobwebs and flakes of white paint.
