August Musings

 

"There is no question of me trying to reform my reaction to the major smell that starts at the end of August to dominate the house in autumn - apples.

I was sitting down at my desk on a rather dull day when this strong mouth-watering perfume filled the room. I had no flowers on my desk. I turned my head and remembered I had bought a big bag of Discovery apples and piled them in a bowl on the window-sill, for their brightness as much as anything...... Another interesting smell that lingers in the house for some time comes from the making of crab apple jelly. It has a faint clovey tang to it. 

The elderberry with its irony smell had also succeeded to the fragrant flower. The bullaces, the sharp wild plums are brightening some hedges with their orange-red where the traveller's joy has become the old man's beard, a soft curly silver beard when the flowers have just gone over into seed.

So August is the beginning of the gathering season as well as the harvesting of cultivated crops. There are lighter sweeter smells as well from two plants that will have a resurgence now if you pick sedulously earlier on - sweet peas and wild strawberries. Mingled with these are the stringent smells of nasturtiums, tomatoes, bonfires, new feverfew leaves, poppy stalks. How can anyone, how can I think of August as a dull month?"

Words by Jenny Joseph ~ 'Led By the Nose: A Garden Of Smells'

Photo - some of my 'Katy' apple crop 2017.