Apricot Fool

By Hannah Twietmeyer

There have been times in the past several years since I planted the apricot tree that I have seriously considered chopping it down. It has produced very few fruit and I did wonder why I gave it space in the garden.  Not this year though.  Last month I had to thin the fruit, so laden were the branches  and now the remaining fruit have swelled and are weighing down the branches with hundreds of glorious golden fruit. As far as possible, I have covere

I wish I could say that our apricot tree provides us with a magnificent crop, but the truth of the matter is that despite the wonderful weather, the couple of pounds of fruit we picked do not really justify the space the tree takes up.  By the time that the blue tits have pecked off half the flowers (apparently they find apricot flowers particularly delicious) and the blackbirds have stabbed at the fruit long before it is fully ripe, I’m amazed that we got even that many.  Still there were a few fine specimens that we ate fresh and we salvaged some of the damaged fruit and stewed them up.  They all tasted wonderful – now I have to decide the tree’s fate – a few delicious fruit in a good year – or more growing space.  The head knows what to do, but the heart may be less rational. .

Right now the apricot tree is so laden with fruit that I fear that branches will break under their weight, but I suspect that the June drop when fruit trees shed some of their excess fruit will reduce the numbers.  Then there are various birds and squirrels who will plunder the tree once the fruit starts to ripen, so in the end I will probably just get a handful – but in the meantime its nice to dream of  an abundance of apricots………….. .

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