a craving for apples

While someone on the slope below is destroying his tyres in the January slush by trying to get going at the stoplight and not succeeding, my thoughts wander again to the pleasures of fall, apples being another one.

My previous garden, right across the street, sported three apple trees of a traditional Swedish sort. The apples were quite small, playfully red-yellow-green, rather sour, firm to the bite and had a fantastic flavor. One year, I drove baskets full to a friend who then made the most gorgeous cider I’ve ever tasted - in his bathroom. These days are gone - all three trees died under the regiment of the new owners. For the sake of fairness, I should add that they had been very old.

My present apple tree used to produce large quantities of non-sour and otherwise also quite uneventful apples. I made apple wine according to an English book. While the 30 liters of wine turned out strong enough to keep me entertained for quite a while, it tasted rather un-apple like and was, in fact, quite boring. Serve well chilled, I should have written. Maybe I’m just not a natural wine maker. These days, my apple tree seems to produce spots most of the time, with a little apple to carry them; I didn’t get anything worth mentioning out of it this fall. Soon I will have to go look for some new (hopefully traditional) apple trees, because I fear that this one will also die.

My personal intake of apples, cider, apple butter etc. is in fact rather limited, but I have to think of the animals as well. In October, moose come into the gardens and they want to find something worth eating there.

If you don’t have anything to offer, they get huffy and run away.

(pictures taken with a 135mm lens from the kitchen window of my previous house)

Tags: apples, cider, moose, sweden, wine making