With fruit for me

Life continues  to be about all things apple as other varieties ripen. The last is Katy. As red as Snow-white's temptation, crisp,  juicy and mostly what the supermarkets would label 'lunch box size.' Now with no lunch boxes to be packed they will  overspill the fruit bowl and sprawl across the worktop, scenting the kitchen with the fragrance of their waxy coating while they wait to be snacked on or crushed to yield their pink-tinted juice.
 We will leave some on the tree to be enjoyed by the birds.One of the few joys of being snowbound  was seeing fieldfares coming into the garden for the crabapples and Japanese quinces. They would love the apples. Meanwhile roe deer have been coming in to nibble on the leaves on the tips of the branches since the leaves first appeared in the spring.

Working  near the apple trees in this part of the garden, I often caught myself humming snatches of a Vaughan Williams tune and realised it was bubbling up from memories laid down as an eleven year old when singing lessons were delivered by the ABC Schools Broadcasting Service. Amongst a rather eclectic mix of folk songs, bush ballads, sea shanties and the occasional hymn was Linden Lea. I suppose that the words rather suit that particular spot, with the oak tree, grass and  birdsong. I remember loving that song when we learned it, singing it  while doing my evening jobs on the farm. It must have been the melody that appealed then as there was little match between words and that setting of undulating acres of wheat, sheep pasture and mallee scrub. I guess it was all part of a kind of subliminal programming, predisposing me to feel a sense of home in a place I had no idea I would ever visit let alone make my home in. Not that all our cultural education had an English bias. I must have been eight when I could recite the second verse of Dorothea McKellar's My Country with patriotic fervour, even if subsequently I would have to admit that 'the love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes' began to run in my veins. I suppose  it is rather special to feel a sense of being at home in two very different countries even if it is difficult to explain.  See? Pause to reflect in a garden and your thoughts can end up in all kinds of places; from apples to poetry to patriotism.