Did anyone wonder about the last photo yesterday?
No?
Never mind, I'll bore you about it anyway!!
Let's start with another piccie of the fruit in question.
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Long past their harvesting best here of course. You may recall, also, that in her guest post, Lady Vicki spoke about my photographing 'woods'... like this...
This tree is clearly beyond bearing any harvest at all. It also stands in a different church yard to the one up top. Not that such trees are tied to being in hallowed grounds. Not all will grow as tall as this old carcass apparently did.
Know what we are looking at yet? It is crabapple. A kind of wild cousin to your supermarket Granny Smiths and Worcester Reds ... Bringing back memories of scrumping and delicious home made jellies. The fruiting one I found in the yard at Henley St Peter's church. As I was photographing it memories were flooding back of a childhood that was rather blessed. Our house was just behind the rectory and we had a back gate that permitted quick access. The choir was heralded as one of the best in the area and I had the great privilege of being part of it for five of my teenage years.
School was a two mile cycle ride away and many an adventure was had on that regular journey. Including raiding the hedgerows for crabapples and blackberries, finding nests with interesting little eggs. Hedgehogs and hares. A fairy or two. Maybe a witch down in the hollow.
But oooohh, that crabapple jelly on the morning toast. mmmmmmmmmmmmm...
No?
Never mind, I'll bore you about it anyway!!
Let's start with another piccie of the fruit in question.
.jpg)
Long past their harvesting best here of course. You may recall, also, that in her guest post, Lady Vicki spoke about my photographing 'woods'... like this...
.jpg) |
| copyright Yamini Ali MacLean |
This tree is clearly beyond bearing any harvest at all. It also stands in a different church yard to the one up top. Not that such trees are tied to being in hallowed grounds. Not all will grow as tall as this old carcass apparently did.
Know what we are looking at yet? It is crabapple. A kind of wild cousin to your supermarket Granny Smiths and Worcester Reds ... Bringing back memories of scrumping and delicious home made jellies. The fruiting one I found in the yard at Henley St Peter's church. As I was photographing it memories were flooding back of a childhood that was rather blessed. Our house was just behind the rectory and we had a back gate that permitted quick access. The choir was heralded as one of the best in the area and I had the great privilege of being part of it for five of my teenage years.
School was a two mile cycle ride away and many an adventure was had on that regular journey. Including raiding the hedgerows for crabapples and blackberries, finding nests with interesting little eggs. Hedgehogs and hares. A fairy or two. Maybe a witch down in the hollow.
But oooohh, that crabapple jelly on the morning toast. mmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Oh yes, homemade crabapple jelly. A feature of my childhood that had quite slipped my mind. Happy memories.
ReplyDeleteCheers, Gail.
Never tasted it but had a small tree for a while they have very pretty flowers but my tree died I think the heat killed it.
ReplyDeleteMerle..........
We have an ornamental crabapple tree in our front yard, which isn't fenced, so we get a lot of traffic of the four-legged antlered variety. We've had as many as six deer under the tree at once, but the other night there were two, a doe and a fawn. The doe stood on her hind legs to reach the fruit higher up, because by January the lower branches are bare. The fawn (a yearling) nosed around in the snow for fallen fruit.
ReplyDeleteI have been told it is possible to make jelly from ornamental crabapples, but they are so small it seems pointless, not to mention I'd only be able to reach the lower branches and I prefer to leave the fruit for the deer. If I were brave, and could climb up onto the roof for the ones even the largest bucks can't reach, I might make jelly, but I am not at all brave when it comes to heights.
So I will have to content myself with memories of childhood treats of homemade fruit jellies on toast.
Luv, K
Isn't it a beautiful tree?
ReplyDeleteI'm beyond making jams and jellies, though. I should, but I' getting lazy in my old age!
(ツ) from Cottage Country Ontario , ON, Canada!
Actually I did wonder what kind of fruit that was and now I know. My grandmother used to make the most delicious crabapple jelly.
ReplyDeleteI love that gnarly old tree.