Shellkopf and Oddamore

Alas, dear reader, I made Shellkopf and Oddamore 2016 up. But welcome to the Night Planted Orchard.

A Skulk of Foxes

We have rearranged the furniture and brought out the mood-lights as the evenings darken.  We have blocked off all the draughts to save on the fuel bills and scattered fleeces and blankets to warm ourselves. The ancient hunter has is own fleece as he grumbles and shuffles on the sofa. It's his sofa now, a concession for his tenth birthday. He needs the comfort for his old bones. But he will stir soon, because the pheasants will start calling. How very dare a noisy pheasant invade his territory. It has been a curious year, now creeping into autumn. Forty degrees of heat and months of drought. The vegetables failed in spectacular fashion, but the fruit trees had fed from some deep secret source. It is a bumper year for apples. All but one of the trees have decided that this is an 'on' year although there are curious remnants of that long drought. The Minnesota Wealthy are tiny, an entire harvest fills a small basket. Though tiny as crabapples they are ripe and full of flavour, almost reminiscent of almonds. Now there are whispers of frost and so this afternoon we harvested the quinces in perfect time. They had become yellow and deeply scented and ready for the basket. They are not timid. They are huge, the size of a big bramley. Lady Snoutingdingle estimates thirty kilos, I say twenty. We shall see. After that, only the medlars and the sloes remain, snoozing for the frost. The ancient hunter? He is snuffling for the door so that he can go and bark at the pheasants. The foxes too, for the foxes creep closer to the edge of his domain, month by month.

A brief pause

Lady Snoutingdingle works like a beast tending the Night Planted Orchard all summer long, planting herbs and vegetables, guarding the fruit and keeping an eye on the ancient hunter's wanderings. Though of late, he has demonstrated exhaustion on her behalf most of the time. Now, in early October, we have picked the quinces and a lull comes in the work. She dusts off the sewing machine and works off the long exhaustion, with an equally exhausting winter of crafting.

First Kiss

There is the welcome sigh of an early autumn wind which touches my bare arm. I remember a girl, long, long ago, whose touch gave me the same icy shiver of joy. Alas the wind does not follow up its caress with that first kiss and the precious memory will have to do.

Hygge

To save gas, we have bought a rocket stove and burn some fraction of the wood that would go to rustic fences or the slow compost of the woodpile. As a result we have slid our cooking into the garden and slowed down so that it is often a race between the food and the darkness. Now we are wrapped in the produce of the searing summer. We cook apples down to freeze for the next year's breakfasts. We cook yet more apples and grapes to make chilli jam. The smoke from the rocket stove has touched it and that, and the chilli, and the joy of our eating food that we have grown is as warming as I can imagine.