Spring Forward - Fall Back on Planning

This year (2011) I intend to make Elderflower cordial for the kids and Elderflower champagne for my wife and myself, although I suspect that the EU will insist that we call it fizzy wine. I also aim to make elderberry and plum or damson wine, I will eat plums if I have to but I feel sure that there are better things to do with them.

Hard to believe it, but this is quite simply the best apple tree

 Chutney uses plums apparently, so I might try that, and chutney seems to last forever as far as I can tell. Plum jam could work too, I'm sure. There are so many trees in the hedgerows and they ought be utilised somehow. I guess all this planning means we will need to start saving up and preparing some suitable bottles and jars, so I’d better start drinking some wine!

Beautiful Springtime - Plum blossom bursts forth first heralding the new season

I am loosely planning to have a stall at the school summer fete, but I need to get organised and find out what date it is held. The children and I can pick fruit, process it in some appropriate way and then sell it at the fete. We could also sell freshly picked fruit if the timing was right. I imagine a stall brimming with chutney, jam, pies, and fresh fruit like plums and cherries all picked processed and sold by children… We could use some of the proceeds to give to the school and the rest to buy new picking/pickling equipment or to pay for website upkeep.

The first cherry blossom I spotted this year

Through the winter months I have been spotting tree types by their shape and bark and logging the trees positions on my map.

A frozen shower of catkins on a Hazel tree

 Now that March is nearly over, Spring has fully arrived and I have been able to detect trees by their blossoms as they arrive. This is proving a very useful method because Plum comes first, followed closely by the Cherry and later Apple and Pear, giving you a chance to focus in on each type as it arrives.

Cherry tree bark - easily identified when you know what to look for

Catkins are also a type of flower and even through February you can spot Hazel stands by observing them. They always look to me like tiny isolated rain showers, frozen into the hedgerows. The straight stands of hazel sticks and branches become fairly easy to distinguish soon too.

  




It All Depends How You Look

I am considered a grown up now, and I have two young children myself. I am keen to get then familiar with the world outside and all the wonders of nature and her perpetual cycles of birth, growth, death and rejuvenation. I want to educate them about wildlife, trees and plants – not computers and mobile phones, these things will change with time. Hopefully nature will not. Personally, I cannot imagine a more healthy, vital and wholesome activity for a family than climbing a tree in order to pick and eat fresh wild fruit.

I work on a computer in my current job and I make a point of getting out of the office every lunchtime for a walk or jog through pleasant woods and fields nearby. While habitually doing this, I began to notice the passing of the seasons more closely and took note of which trees blossomed in the spring. I then began to identify some of these trees as plums or damsens (always first to bloom in spring), cherries and apple trees. They were effectively wild trees or on public/common ground.



Do you see traffic or proto-plums?



Once I became able to identify these trees I started to spot them wherever I went. It all depends how you look. It’s a bit like, when a friend gets a new car or bike, you know what it looks like and you keep an eye out for them on the road. Suddenly you begin to see similar vehicles all over the place, it soon becomes hard to believe that you hadn’t noticed how many there were on the road before – they seem to be everywhere. As you might expect, it’s exactly the same with trees, only the opportunity to benefit from this new found skill is going to be far more fruitful, than car identification.

Once I tuned in to these trees, I started to notice apple trees in the car parks, in hedgerows, in housing estates and in recreation grounds, it’s even easier when they have fruit on them or on the ground under them. I spotted cherries surrounding the B & Q car park and all along the main road into town, beside the railway track and in the community centre grounds and even outside the building in the industrial estate where I worked. Naturally, if you identify the blossoms, when they first arrive in spring and note their locations down (this is easy with modern mapping technology) you will be the first one ready when the fruit ripens.

Do you see the cars or the Cheries that will be here in June?

Cherry trees are considered ornamental due to their florid blossom that shows shortly after the plums herald the onset of spring. Consequently, they are often planted along avenues and by roadsides I have also found them used in and around car parks. People though seem to overlook the fact that they are cherry trees and that this is where cherries come from. The same thing is true for apple and pear trees, which blossom slightly later.



Do you see industry or Cherry trees?

Orchards and apple trees enjoy a rich heritage in our cultural history. Almost everyone eats apples, or so it seems, and there are a myriad of different types. Interestingly if you plant an apple pip and it grows, a completely new and random type of apple tree will result and the fruit will taste quite different from its parent tree. The only way to propagate as same type of tree/fruit is to graft a branch onto new rootstock, but that’s all getting a bit unnecessarily technical. Instead of preserving familiar types of tree, you could always try to create your own new type – although it may taste horrible or even bear no fruit, at least it is original.

Can you see Cherry trees and Hazle stands or just a dog walker?

My wife spotted a pear tree on waste ground near the children’s school and picked a few that were easily in reach. Then she noticed several apple trees in the local swimming pool car park. We drove to the pool with some friends and picked a veritable hoard by standing on the roof of our car, then throwing them into picnic blankets held out by our enthusiastic children. They were delicious rosy red apples with pinkish flesh! We named them Flemming Park Reds after the leisure centre. I also began collecting fruit during my lunch hour, initially just eating a couple of plums and bringing some home for the family. Then I started finding apples, which my son and I tend to eat every day.