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poliphiloMy father-in-law has been losing his balance and falling over while picking apples from his apple tree. I said I'd do it for him. So yesterday Ailz and I were at the in-laws bungalow and I harvested what was left of the crop. I also picked the pear tree clean of pears.
When I was a kid we had a little orchard at the top of the garden- apples, plums, pears. Rationing was still in force and to have your own source of fresh fruit was enviable. People used to make lots of jam (my father-in-law still does). We had an air-raid shelter in our back yard and that's where we stored the apples we weren't going to use immediately. On pallets, wrapped up in newspaper, in the dark. That place was scary. You had earth piled over you- an artificial hill with an elder bush planted on top- the whitewash was peeling, there were brick-dusty spiderswebs hanging off it and the air was thick with the sweet smell of rotting apple-flesh.
When I was in Cambridge (studying to be a priest) we lived in part of an old rectory and there was a huge, old apple tree at the front. Someone explained to me that the apples were a very rare- if not obsolete- Victorian variety. There were other, smaller apple trees round the back. We were living on bent pins and pocket fluff so it was great to have all that fruit for free.
My ex brother-in law used to be a fruit farmer. I remember visiting him in an orchard once. The grass was full of windfalls- tons and tons of them. "Don't you gather these?" I asked. "No, not economical," he said." This was in the pocket fluff days and I was shocked.
I've read that the apples in the Bible are really pomegranates. Eve's apple was a pomegranate, the apples in the Song of songs were pomegranates. Not the same, is it? Pomegranates are silly, messy, fiddly things. You need utensils to eat them. But an apple you just twist from its stalk and it's yours.
Apples are mythic. Atalanta chases apples, the Hesperides recline beneath an apple tree, King Arthur retires to an apple-island. I shut my eyes and the light is dim and green and there's ground mist between the rows of trees and we're back in the middle ages or the dark ages and something wonderful or terrifying is about to happen. They're all apple trees, of course. Pear trees, plum trees, just wouldn't do.
I like my apples hard and sharp. Those cotton-woolly French apples are an abomination. Cox's Orange Pippin, Braeburn, Granny Smith for eating; Bramley for making sauce or putting in pies.
When I was a kid we had a little orchard at the top of the garden- apples, plums, pears. Rationing was still in force and to have your own source of fresh fruit was enviable. People used to make lots of jam (my father-in-law still does). We had an air-raid shelter in our back yard and that's where we stored the apples we weren't going to use immediately. On pallets, wrapped up in newspaper, in the dark. That place was scary. You had earth piled over you- an artificial hill with an elder bush planted on top- the whitewash was peeling, there were brick-dusty spiderswebs hanging off it and the air was thick with the sweet smell of rotting apple-flesh.
When I was in Cambridge (studying to be a priest) we lived in part of an old rectory and there was a huge, old apple tree at the front. Someone explained to me that the apples were a very rare- if not obsolete- Victorian variety. There were other, smaller apple trees round the back. We were living on bent pins and pocket fluff so it was great to have all that fruit for free.
My ex brother-in law used to be a fruit farmer. I remember visiting him in an orchard once. The grass was full of windfalls- tons and tons of them. "Don't you gather these?" I asked. "No, not economical," he said." This was in the pocket fluff days and I was shocked.
I've read that the apples in the Bible are really pomegranates. Eve's apple was a pomegranate, the apples in the Song of songs were pomegranates. Not the same, is it? Pomegranates are silly, messy, fiddly things. You need utensils to eat them. But an apple you just twist from its stalk and it's yours.
Apples are mythic. Atalanta chases apples, the Hesperides recline beneath an apple tree, King Arthur retires to an apple-island. I shut my eyes and the light is dim and green and there's ground mist between the rows of trees and we're back in the middle ages or the dark ages and something wonderful or terrifying is about to happen. They're all apple trees, of course. Pear trees, plum trees, just wouldn't do.
I like my apples hard and sharp. Those cotton-woolly French apples are an abomination. Cox's Orange Pippin, Braeburn, Granny Smith for eating; Bramley for making sauce or putting in pies.
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Date: 2007-10-08 07:29 pm (UTC)There's a lovely, ancient apple tree on my parent's farm that I just adore. The fruit are sort of striped yellow and red, squat like fat doughnuts. The flesh is crisp and the flavor is a perfect balance of sweet and tart. Alas, a late freeze robbed us of all fruit this season, something we were lamenting just yesterday while walking under its boughs.
I like pomegranates, though. There was a tree in the back garden, last place I lived in northern California. It was something so foreign to my experience I didn't even know what it was until someone told me. When they ripen fully on the tree, they tend to split open in a most suggestive manner and one can break them apart in pieces and eat them easily with bear hands. Lovely, sensuous things, messy too, but the ones I've bought since in the market were a profound disappointment.
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Date: 2007-10-08 09:41 pm (UTC)Pomegranates are still fairly rare over here. I've only ever had them from the shops. I love the idea of being able to pick them off the tree.