#windfall apples

But this is now making me think of windfall island

It was a wet and windy afternoon and I saw that the lawn was littered with a few mature-looking windfalls. Not wanting to venture out, I scoured my cupboards and put together this recipe, based on several different chutneys I found online. I wanted mine to be a bit hotter than most, so upped the chilli content; plus I found a couple of sachets of pickling spice I had been given as freebies, so in…

Windfall apples.

This photo appeals to the part of me that can’t resist a good scavenge.  The part of me that as a four year old, willingly got up at four o’clock to go mushrooming with my mother on the abandoned wartime airfield near Sandhutton.

The part that went gathering rosehips at school in the autumn to send away to be made into Delrosa rosehip syrup; and has always gathered blackberries in season, to jam, jelly or quite simply devour whilst picking.

We discovered that the inhabitants of rural France think just the same way.  Nobody ever leaves home without an ‘au cas où‘ bag – ‘just in case’ they find some walnuts, almonds, mushrooms, wild cherries or mirabelles.  And neither did we- that bag was often full by the time we got home.

Now we’re back, we hunt down the biggest, purplest sloes to lay down bottles of sloe gin for winter evenings.

And in autumn we never walk through the village without rescuing windfall apples from the path, disregarded by the trees’ owners because they quite simply have too much fruit in their own gardens.

Here’s some of last autumn’s haul, being transformed into blackberry and apple jelly to spread on toast after a chilly winter walk.

In response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge: Sweet.

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