We had a midsummer picnic meeting in the community orchard yesterday. The mown paths made it easy and fun to walk around the whole orchard, thanks to Andy and Paul for all their mowing energy.
The flowering meadow was looking fantastic and full of wonderful array of vetches, meadow cranesbills, oxeye daisies, dog roses and clovers. And here's our splendid bug hotel built by our neighbours - St Augustines Primary School.
But the most spectacular was the mass of hay rattle, which had only been sown from collected seed by Paul about two years earlier.
However unfortunately the apple trees were not as magnificent. There were only about 6 trees with any pickable apple crop out of the 48 trees in the orchard. We concluded that an early frost had picked off the flowers but, even then, there was a poor crop of flowers in late April and May. The previous year had given us a bumper crop and perhaps we didn't make enough noise with our wassail in the dark month of January. So let's hope for a better crop next year.
What is your apple crop like this year?
