Village Country Diary Wilding apples
Withybed plums
SEPTEMBER S
eptember is one of those months that feels like summer one minute and autumn the
next. It starts our meteorological au- tumn, but in some Eastern cultures is part of a separate season focused on harvest. And of course it’s famous for the Keats poem, describing it as the “season of mists and mellow fruitful- ness.” It’s this fruitfulness that gives the colours now as the flowers finish, combined with the gold of harvested fields. And the first leaves begin to turn gold later in the month. We had a good early summer in
this area, quite warm and very dry. Then it went cold and wettish. The corn crops might be suffering, as they like it the other way round! However, there should be a great fruit harvest. The earlier crops in
Mary Green celebrates the bounty of autumn.
the summer included an excellent harvest of English strawberries, blue- berries and cherries – I even bought English apricots this year. There were more berries than usual on my wild strawberry plants. Then came the cherry-plums, those early small round red or gold plums which flourish around here, along with their cultivated version, the pissard plum – the dark one with the bronze leaves. Now in September we have the
GOLD
true plums and damsons. The old plum tree at the Tardebigge Lime Kilns orchard is so laden with fruit that one of the branches has had to be propped up to prevent it breaking off. The damsons are also packed with fruit. All five apple trees are fruiting beautifully now that the coppiced hazel hedge lets in the sun- light. The Lime Kilns are open for the Heritage Weekend on September 9 and 10, so go and have a look. In my garden the golden plums
so typical of Withybed Green are ripe and sweet. I think I have finally discovered which variety they are. A lot of people say they are Pershore Egg Plums but they are not the same. They are very sweet when ripe and have a distinctive red fleck on the continues overleaf
The Village September 2017 45
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