It's that time of year. The kitchen table is covered in windfalls, boxes are slowly becoming filled with the very best of the crops, and the horses are revelling in bucket after bucket of rejects.
I am always confused about the supermarket attitude towards apples. The pile in the middle of my photo is of an apple that I simply know of as a Reinette. It is not quite the same as one I have planted here, which is called Reine de Reinette.
The ones in the photo are crisp, juicy, sweet, and beautifully flavoured; I would have thought they were the perfect commercial apple. Yet all one finds on supermarket shelves are the standard Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Braeburn, Gala, etc; mostly (not all) uninteresting fruits grown to look nice on the shelves.
The one in the photo is what I thought I was buying when I planted my Reine de Reinette tree, but, frankly, mine is not quite as good. It's a very good apple (see below) but not in the same league as my neighbour's Reinette.
A few years back I took a cutting of my neighbour's Reinette tree. It grew OK, and is already planted out. It's still only about two feet tall, and it'll be some time before it lets me know if I've wasted my time or not. I'm hoping that sometime in the future my grandsons will have their own supply of this delicious apple.
Supermarkets, please take note.
N.B. If idiotic Troll-Club members Bitch, Mia, Sara, et al, leave insulting comments, I shall be deleting them as soon as I spot them. In other words, don't bother.