“Can we stop saying that the garden needs it now?” said R moodily, glowering out of the window at the driving rain. “No,” I replied. “We do still need it – the ground’s like rock.” He sighed, got his umbrella, and took himself off out for a damp walk. I stayed put for a while, reading (Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir series: recommended), then sighed in my turn and went out into what by now was just an irritating drizzle, to tidy up the patio pots and plant a couple of asters. Then I started wondering what I could photograph today.
Nothing on the patio was looking especially interesting or attractive, and it would have been unkind to start dragging invertebrates out of their roosts in these conditions, so I had to come up with a different subject. After wandering around for a while and snapping a few wet flowers, I ended up down in the wild garden, photographing some of the many, many quinces currently bending our quince tree almost to the ground. I planted this tree a couple of years after we arrived here, and quite by chance put it in a position of which it approves, so it began cropping pretty quickly, and over the couple of decades since it’s given us a lot of fruit. But it crops erratically – some years feast, and others famine – and I’ve always struggled to work out what combination of climatic conditions produces which result. This year we have an absolute glut, even though we had a dry summer and the quince is a tree that famously likes to keep its feet damp, but it’s a “mast year”, when fruiting trees and shrubs are producing an unusual quantity of berries, seeds and nuts, and it seems that the conditions that lead to this cyclical abundance are having the same effect on autumn-fruiting trees such as apples and quinces.
When we have more quinces than we can use ourselves, I always think it’s nice to offer the surplus to the village, so about a week ago we filled a trug and put it on top of the front wall, with a notice inviting people to help themselves. For a few days there was a slow but steady take-up, but since the end of the week I’ve found myself doing more curating than refilling: checking over the remaining fruits, removing the ones that are starting to go bad, and replacing them with fresh windfalls. I’m starting to think that the village may have passed peak quince.
