Friends Among Wildflowers by Laura Briggs

Author:Laura Briggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: small town, farm series, village series, yorskhire farm
Publisher: Laura Briggs

Practice and Pruning

Chapter Ten

On a walk in search of the wandering geese, Lucy had noticed fruit on the ground in the old orchard near the clearing. Her shoe had squashed a little green-yellow orb, now rotting and with tiny worms burrowing in and out of its skin.

Speckles on the whitish part, like dark grains sprinkled for decoration. Lucy had never seen them before, not in supermarkets. On the branches above her head, however, they were hanging in clusters, as if the trees were growing some sort of elongated golf ball in bundles.

"Quinces," said Deborah. "They're quite common." She inspected the one Lucy had brought her, which was still pale green and hard. "They make a lovely jam, I jar them as preserves whenever I have a nice harvest. There's a little thicket of them quite close to my house."

"So they're good to eat," said Lucy. They did not look good to her, but looks were not reliable.

"Yes, if you cook them," said Deborah. "I can give you recipes. These are quite an old variety. They probably predate the farm." That was a joke, Lucy thought, because Deborah laughed. "Joseph would have gathered ripened ones, I expect, he used to forage all over the property come ripening season. People always did in the olden days. Berries, crabapples, wild plums, medlars. Anything one could eat was worth the effort."

The trees had once been part of a proper orchard, spaced in neat rows that were broken where trees had died and stumps had gone back to the earth. The rest had turned wild, their branches gnarled, some bowed by ice or stress, some crossing with the limbs of neighboring trees as if battling for space. Not an orchard, more of a grove.

Lucy wandered beneath. The last row was not quince, but some kind of apple. It looked small and pinkish. Perhaps the pink turned into a darker blush when ripe.

She could prune them after the fruiting season was over. In the old shed, a pole saw stood rusting in one corner, which had probably been used on trees. Maybe Joseph had used it to help keep this spot in order. Some farmer must have looked after them when they were first planted. It had been a long time ago.

She gathered up some of the rotting fruits which had fallen off the quince branches. Did it have seeds or stones? She hadn't asked Deborah what color it would be when ripe. Yellow, probably. At present, it was not very appetizing, but smelled like the bottom of the fridge's fruit and veg compartment when she forgot to clean it.

Fewer apples had fallen off. She could not find seeds in the one she picked up, which had been hollowed by some of nature's foragers, leaving the core and part of the top half. Lucy squatted, poking around. Perhaps seedlings came up. The orchard might be growing its own replacements.

Near the cadaverous remains of an old orchard tree, now speckled with ribbon mushrooms, the grass moved from a creature stirring.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.