Thank You The Apple - To The Trees Edition #54

Barely had Summer cast its rays upon my crown as Autumn’s first breaths started to brush across my cheek. The evenings now start to grow noticeably shorter and cooler and our shadows grow slowly longer as the sun drops its arc, slither by slither, day by day.

Summer greenery becomes strewn with spots of red, though a poor harvest awaits the birds this year as haws and berries are distinctly lacking in numbers. A Summer of inconsistent weather and a lot of rain meant fewer chances for pollinating insects to do their job.

That said, the paths through the woods have become so overgrown with bramble that one must force their way through their prickled tentacles, leaving trousers smeared with black-red stains. Fingers too have become stained from picking their ripening fruit, though in many cases even the ripest looking blackberries are somewhat sour due to a lack of sun.

The translucent glowing arils of the yew trees, on the other hand, are far more palatable, given that one removes the pip. A recent walk around the Bishop’s Palace provided a veritable feast of plump yew berries, so soft and gently sweet that one almost forgets they are produced by a tree that would cause one to perish if any other part of it were ingested.

Along with yew, the reds of thorn, guelder-rose, crab apples, rosehip, and wild service tree provide sparse, yet pleasing contrasts amongst the verdant August foliage. Yellows, golds, and browns also work their way intermittently into the pallet as Autumn stretches her fingers ready to play the first gentle notes that will coax Summer from the window and provoke the early stirrings of the dreaming Winter.

In the lanes, a billion white anemones sparkle in the upper reaches of the rows, soon to transform into romantic clouds of fluffy white seeds which make our native clematis vine thoroughly deserving of its folk names, old man’s beard, and traveller’s joy. Their trailing white beards symbolise the coming of summer’s maturity and will remain on the hedges throughout the winter, slowly distributing their seeds upon the winds.

The leaves of trees now held aloft for months, start to show their age. Bug eaten, bird pecked, deer nibbled, scorched, spotted, ragged and rough around the edges, they have hung on through storms and high winds of this year’s anti-Summer, as well as through the intermittent bouts of heat. They are now visibly weathered, wrinkled and elderly leaves approaching the end of their relatively short lives.

The reddening is carried from countryside into town by the planted Rowans, their bright red berries dangle prominently in clusters in gardens and on roadsides, awaiting their fate. The blackbirds, mistle thrush, song thrush, amongst others, find them irresistible. As they feast upon the flesh, they pass the seeds through their system, distributing them here and there in little parcels of fertiliser. Interestingly, this is not true for the rowan cultivars that produce pink, or white berries, an example of which grows in the Chalice well gardens. The berries are exactly the same in all but colour, their whiteness alone deters the birds. Clusters of them can be seen hanging in the trees long after all other rowans have been stripped bare, the birds oblivious to the dangling feast, apparently hidden from their view.

Upon the short hedgerow in our back garden, two pigeons have been visiting for the last couple of weeks, checking up on the bounty of ripening elderberries. The berries have just ripened and the pigeons peck incessantly, filling their crops with as many berries as they can, hiding them from the sight of other pigeons, and from my foraging fingers, for nibbling upon later. In the meantime, at the front of the house, the collection of trees planted upon the mound at Windmill Hill are now showing their seeds, maples of silver, field and sycamore with their winged samara’s, the limes with their canopied woody berries and the horse chestnuts, with their leathery green casings – only a short time ago I was welcoming their leaves in springtime, and it will be too soon before they are bare once again.

Thank You The Apple

At this time of the year, I am often to be found propped up against the trunk of an apple in one of Glastonbury’s plentiful orchards.

One particular narrow corridor of orchard upon the East side of the island, provides many opportunities to park a bum upon an old stump, or on the horizontal trunk of a half fallen tree to witness the start of the orchard’s drumming, as the trees offer back to the earth the efforts of their summer’s growth. If one sits quietly and patiently, apples can be heard falling from the clutches of their branch with a rustle of foliage and a thud upon the floor, a unique and reassuring sound that pricks one’s ears immediately, especially when they fall from the tree beneath which one is sitting!

Over the past few weeks, I have been blessed with the opportunity to spend time with Crosby Casey. We take a couple of days a week exploring places, or visiting the Wild Roots project, near Baltonsborough, doing odd jobs, or just relaxing. As well as being pleasant company, Crosby is also a player of the melodeon, and we recently embarked upon our first collaboration, a song I wrote this time last year while sat in aforementioned orchard, called, Thank You The Apple. a video of which appears below.

Big thanks to Crosby, what a pleasure it is for us to collaborate.

Until next time, we walk To The Trees.