We picked some wild quince, meddlers and apples last week. The taste of old variety English apples is the taste of Autumn. I miss it.
I told the girl's stories about when we used to pick apples from the orchards and roadside trees years ago. Some were green and irregular as cobbles, some were gold as an ovulating harvest moon, some were pink as fuchsias, many had a worm at the core :)
My favourite were the small, sharp pink ones, They burst inside your mouth and crunched like a piece of brittle bark on an untrod woodland path. The pink of their skins seeped like a sunset through to the core.
The fragrant scent of quince and the mustiness of meddlers spread through the house as they laid in the basket waiting to be made into crumbles, pies, chips and sauce.
I love the idea of guerrilla gardening, growing and gathering varieties of fruit and vegetable in places where people can pick them freely. Maybe it is a way of preserving heritage varieties of edible plant for future generations.
It may also be a way of reclaiming our commons.
in my grandma's neighborhood, every house seemed to have some sort of fruit tree: apples, pears, plums, cherry, peaches, etc. and you could just walk down the street and fruit would be dripping off the trees. no one seemed to pick or eat their fruit. i remember gathering fruit up and eating it as we walked. loved the pears and plums the most. <3
ReplyDeleteThat sounds wonderful! What a fantastic neighbourhood. I would definitly be eating the fruit though :)
DeleteI pick the apples in a very old orchard which is next to the place I used to work. The trees are always dripping with apples despite the neglect. We pick about 40lbs of apples each year and it never looks like we have taken any.
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