Minnie’s Musings

So, we had His Nibs home for an overnight stay as Grandma and Auntie E were coming for supper and he likes seeing family.

One’s mountain goat monkey of a son has his uses. Specifically a perfect sense of balance and absolutely no fear of heights.

On a rocky coast line this reduces me to a gibbering wreck of frayed nerves as he romps over bolder and flotsam and jetsam. In the back garden, it fills me with delight as I send him up the apple tree.

With the promise of going to see his sister – and more importantly her fridge full of diet coke – he lent a willing hand to pick the apples at the top of our fallen apple tree.

Regular readers of my private Facebook page may just remember that our beloved but somewhat ancient apple tree fell down last year in a particularly vicious storm. Well, the taproot did not sever so the tree is still going and has chosen this year to produce an abundance of fruit.

Before any more littered the ground in horrid brown spotty heaps, I decided to retrieve the rest and take them to the local apple press.

His Nibs is careful in his climbing, making like Catherine Zeta Jones and those red laser lights as he negotiated random branches and twigs. He is also careful in his picking. Handing down pairs of apples, carefully deprived of twigs and leaves.

What he is not careful about is how said apples are put in the tub when he is at ground level. ‘Put them in carefully!’ I wailed, ‘Don’t throw them!’. Only to wince as another handful was dropped from a height that ensures bruising.

Got my own back by making him lug two heavily laden tubs out to the car.

I was somewhat pleased with our haul, thinking that a large tub and two thirds wasn’t bad off a single tree. So when the teenage boy at the apple press said, ‘Oh there aren’t very many.’ I was a tad miffed.

So I am looking forward to receiving half a dozen bottles of this year’s vintage, which I will distribute to Grandma et al and then proceed to leave in the cupboard until Christmas when I can think about spicy warm drinks. It not being cider, I can indulge in mixology… getting ahead of myself.