292. Confessions of an English Apple-Eater . . .

At the weekend I picked another apple from our new cordon line of fruit trees. It was a good size - 230g when I weighed it - and I was quite proud of it. The first apple from that tree. A James Grieve, said my labelling system.

I picked it for Saturday lunch, to be shared and discussed with my wife. To be lauded, both the apple and me.


It did not look like a James Grieve. I checked a second book. Its eye was meant to be closed or part closed. This apple's eye was open, wide open.

I was unsure, and when I cut through the middle with a knife, even more so. Hard, culinary apple hard.

I checked the pictures in the two books again. Nothing had changed.

I bit off a piece and chewed. Slowly, sadly. Disappointedly. It was a culinary apple; a cooking apple. Possibly a Bramley; it looked like one.

I hung my head. And I thought about the chain of actions from harvesting the scion to transplanting the grafted sapling. Where had the mistake been made? By the person who had given me the scion? By me in taking the scion home, amongst a lot of similar scions. In removing the scions from the fridge and grafting them onto rootstocks in my shed? In planting the grafted rootstocks in the tree nursery? Or in the final transplanting of the maidens a year later to the cordon line?

My wife tried to cheer me up. 'Maybe the first apple from a tree is just an anomaly?'

I don't think so.

I made myself eat every last acidic mouthful.

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