31 August 2009

apples in august

It may still be August, but there're definitely signs of autumn about. Yesterday morning, having donned both a sweater and coat, I shuffled my way through nascent piles of leaves and chestnuts on my way to the shops:

We even have apples ready for harvesting:

While we used to gather loads from the old (Victorian) orchard tucked away in our development,

we now have some serious competition. This year, a keen bean beat us to it, picking the lower branches clean and hoovering up the windfalls in one fell swoop. We did manage to gather a few,

but only enough for two small batches of applesauce.

So good thing we know Rachel, who has an apple tree so big she actually owns professional picking equipment! After a visit to Rachel today, we have enough apples to make a whole freezer-full of applesauce. Now we're ready for autumn and winter!

4 comments:

  1. I'd love to have room for an apple tree, but until that happy day I can see I'm going to have to cultivate a 'contact'!

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  2. Oh, I LOVE walking through dried leaves! Rachel sounds like the best friend ever, didn't she come to your rescue with some blackberries as well?

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  3. The whole family is picking Bramleys right now, apple pie is on the menu.

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  4. All we need now is a mechanical peeler to make apple sauce on a commercial scale!

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