Tree Following September Update

 This year for Tree Following, I've chosen the beautiful cooking apple tree in Crafty Green Boyfriend's mother's garden. You can read the post where I introduced the tree here. 

The tree is around fifty years old and produces a lot of apples (last year was a bumper year and I gave apples to colleagues, neighbours, students in my writing classes as well as friends!). The apples are excellent in apple crumble or just stewed and eaten with custard or added to porridge. 

Here are some photos of the tree from the middle of August:

The apples were already looking well developed

but I don't think that this year's harvest will be such a bumper harvest as last year's!

I also took more photos on 1 September. 

By 1st September, the plums on the nearby plum tree were already ripening, and some were ready to eat (and tasting delicious!)

The nasturtiums are also ready for harvesting, the leaves taste very peppery and can be added to salads or to stews. The flowers are also edible, but I haven't tried those yet (I prefer to leave the flowers for the pollinating insects to enjoy)

The hydrangea bush is looking wonderful 

This Magpie feather had fallen in the garden - it's easy to think of magpies as being black and white, but many of their black feathers are actually very iridescent and show blue, purple and green depending on the light 

We were in the garden again today and I noticed this spider's web in the tree 

Although the apples aren't really ripe yet, this one has already fallen from the tree

 Several Speckled Wood Butterflies were flying around the garden, including this one

 and several tiny froglets were wandering around in the grass, having left the garden pond to explore the wider world

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People who follow trees in the UK may be interested in the Woodland Trust  competition to find the Tree of the Year. Trees are nominated for their age or importance, in some cases their historical importance, in others because they have been threatened with destruction and the local community has rallied round them. The winner will represent the UK in the European Tree of the Year competition!

Voting is open until Sunday 15 October, and this year's winner will be announced on Thursday 19 October.

Find out more and cast your vote here.