Boxing Day and a brief hush before the next round of hospitality.
The apples in the foreground, small brightly-red baubles, are Cocket’s Red – windfalls from the orchards at RHS Wisley collected on Christmas Eve. Fragrant, crisp, lilac-scented fruits only a tad larger than a golf ball and rich ruby-red. The two named trees at Wisley must have ripened late in the season – at least well after the Apple Festival in October, since they were not picked clean at the time and the ground was full of windfalls and even some fruit still on the branch. Almost every other tree and the grass beneath them were bare.
I’ve looked at the National Fruit Collection database at Brogdale for more information and the variety is also known, fittingly, as ‘One Bite’, and also ‘Marguerite Henrietta’. The entry can be found at: http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=1181&&fruit=apple
See also http://www.brogdale.org/
More high winds and rain forecast for tomorrow and battening down of the hatches required once more (our TV aerial came crashing down earlier in the week, harming no-one and no-thing, thankfully). A chance to pump some fresh air into the lungs this afternoon then. But first, another cup of coffee….
The Teddington Gardener 