Country diary: the orchard is fragrant with fallen fruit

St Dominic, Tamar valley: The best keepers among the apple varieties have been carefully gathered and stored in the mouse-proofed shedThe steep way up to James and my sister Mary's documented orchard of local varieties is littered with shoals of trampled apples - too small to have been much temptation for the youngsters who dared to scrump in our grandparents' day. Clusters of berries cover a 50ft holly beside an outgrown Norway spruce, while hazels in the sheltering hedge banks show tight catkins among fading leaves, and dark red haws load thorns.Cidery smells exude from fallen apples such as Mr North's Cornish Pine, now surplus to the earlier juicing sessions; remains of Mrs Bull's, a spectacular large crimson apple, lie almost submerged in bedraggled grass. Heavily laden boughs have split from the Herefordshire Pippin, but the fragrant, orange-striped apples hang on to intact branches, unlike the Listener, which has dropped all its primrose coloured fruit (shown by genetic tests as synonymous with Early Bower and the Sack and Sugar). Continue reading...