Autumnal apple inspiration

Apples belong to every season, perhaps with partial exception of spring, but I have them connected especially with autumn. Many of their varieties turn ripe at this time of year or need to be picked and stored.

I’ve learnt quite recently that winter varieties need to be picked in autumn but can’t be eaten until some time of their storage passes, even two or three months, it surprised me. When we moved into our house in the village, there were several apple trees in the garden but all the apples could be eaten at the time of picking and I hadn’t known it could be different until we wanted to buy new apple trees and studied the available varieties.

The old apple trees in our garden were getting worse every year and we decided eventually to chop them down and plant new ones so now we have two young apple trees, one of summer variety and the other one of late autumn variety. This year just one apple turned ripe…

I like apples picked straight in the garden so I was quite excited when a colleague at work, who is a passionate gardener, offered to bring me a bag of her apples because they have too many of them this year and wouldn’t be able to consume them all. She even asked me whether I wanted to come during the coming weekend in my car and get more. It was a tempting offer and as she doesn’t live that far from us, I thought that I and my hubby could find some time and go for the apples.

It never works this way, you know. My hubby was busy and I could choose – to go there alone or not to go there at all and it felt like an internal struggle as I was afraid of quite a few things. Getting lost along the way, not knowing what the visit would be like… Eventually my desire won to go and visit her and see her garden and family she speaks about during our lunches, it all felt very friendly and worth throwing my fears away.

You might have guessed it, the apples you can see in my photos today are those from her garden. They are tasty and smelling good and I had to capture at least some of them. To make them last and to remind me that fears are not bad but we need to get down to their roots and find the right answer to them.