Well, I don’t mean to alarm anyone but it seems the apple tree behind the shed has gone on strike.
This year’s crop was shaping up nicely, plump and promising, until, quite suddenly, they weren’t there anymore. One day: a bounty of rosy fruit. The next: bare branches and a single note pinned to the trunk reading simply, “Gone travelling.”
Now, it is true that this particular apple tree has always been a little eccentric. For years it produced apples shaped like minor household items: kettles, eggcups, once even a shoehorn. But this disappearance is a new trick altogether.
While I was pondering this puzzlement, I encountered Old Doris Scatterfold outside the post office, where she was wrestling a plastic bag into submission.
Me: “Morning, Doris. Have you seen anything unusual? The apples have absconded.”
Doris: “Which apples?”
Me: “Mine.”
Doris: “No. But my cat’s been off his food again, if that’s relevant.”
Me: “Possibly. Though I can’t quite connect the dots.”
Doris: “He’s very fussy, you know. Refused the pilchards outright.”
Me: “Well, yes, but the apples…”
Doris: “Have you tried a whistle? Sometimes I whistle for my cat’s appetite and it comes back.”
Me: “Should I whistle for my apples then?”
Doris: (Pauses to think far too seriously) “Only if they’re hungry.”
And off she went, leaving me exactly where I started but now questioning whether apples, when left unsupervised, develop appetites or travel plans.
So here I sit, back in my potting shed, wondering what the apple tree is playing at and whether I ought to offer it some sort of apology or incentive to resume its duties. I might try singing to it later, though my last attempt at horticultural vocal encouragement resulted in the runner beans sulking for a fortnight.
If anyone else’s apple tree has packed its bags recently, do let me know. Perhaps they’ve all run off together to form a travelling orchard.
🧓 Virgil
(staring at an empty branch, considering a whistle, and trying to remember if this counts as a conversation with a plant)