Bramleys

Bramleys are wonderful trees. They produce vast quantities of apples with little – or in our case, no – attention. Sadly, our beloved Bramley blew over in the storm a couple of weeks ago (possibly due to lack of attention . . .).

 

Nevertheless, it is still alive, and now there is a whole new batch of apples that I can reach.

However, I don’t need any more Bramleys. I’ve given away two boxes and I have a utility room full of buckets of them. We eat them every night – as either apple crumble or apple cake – and yesterday I made some chutney.

I think I shall leave the rest of the apples for the birds, as my brother-in-law Peter does. We stayed with him in October a few years ago and his Bramley tree was smothered in blackbirds. It was glorious.

Here is our Bramley in better days (May 2010).

We're wondering whether to prune all the trees around the Bramley (which caused it to develop too much on one side) and then haul it back up somehow. But I'm such a wuss about pruning (and weeding, and destructive-type gardening in general, as you may have gathered).