The new tall fence should help protect Mary and James’s orchard from the attention of roe deer, which come from the valley’s sheltering woodland to nibble leaves, bark and the precious shoots of new grafts, as well as shed their potentially dangerous ticks.
Most of the fruit trees are more than 30 years old, but this diverse and catalogued collection of once widely grown apples, cherries and pears is constantly being refined and added to. Short twigs of February-grafted cherries already show swelling buds above the yellow plastic tape that binds specific varieties to vigorous root-stocks. Lanky poor specimens of cherries have been dug out and the spaces infilled with more apples.
A branch, cut from the Reinette de Brucbrucks, is staked and planted almost two feet deep; the aerial root buds or burr knots that form on this pitcher (so easy to grow that a branch “pitched over the shoulder would take root where it landed”) apple will soon form strong underground roots, and there could be fruit within a couple of years.
Little twigs of three differently sourced red apples have been grafted on to a Sops-in-Wine (a crimson dessert apple). The extra varieties are all characterised by dark pink blossom and purplish bark and seem to be related to the wild Malus pumila ‘Niedzwetzkyana’ (from mountains of the Tian Shan, beyond the Caspian Sea). Two decades will pass before this multigrafted tree reaches the size of its neighbour comprising productive boughs of Westcott Pig Snout, Tough Skin, Peter Lock and the Callington Gilliflower.
Genetic testing has proven the latter to be the national variety Scotch Bridget and, in the cool apple shed, there remains a box of its aromatic fruits, picked last autumn but still tasty and pleasant to eat as spring approaches.
As squally showers blast in from the north-west, Kit Hill on the northern horizon is part obscured. Petals blow off the myrobalans (cherry plums) on the edge of the wood and leaves of snowdrops have overgrown the faded flowers. Water hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos) blooms in the pond and fluffy catkins of willow overhang lent lilies and mud-spattered primrose along the hedge.
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