Everyone who has ever owned an Apple tree knows the problem. Monday: Apple Pie. Tuesday: Stewed Apple. Wednesday: Oh, Stewed Apple again, no time for baking. Thursday: Apple Crumble. Friday: Stewed Apple. Saturday: Freeze some stewed apple. Sunday: Roast Pork with Apple Sauce. And so on with Apple Charlotte, Apple Cake, Roast Chicken with Apple Sauce, etc.

Yes, it’s windfall time. The wind, and the accursed Codling Moth, ensure a steady supply of apples on the lawn. They look warm and welcoming on an autumnal morning. The only thing is…

that when you get up close to them, or pick them up, they’re invariably half rotten, split, covered in little black holes, already home to a nest of woodlice nibbling away at the underside, already being gouged by little brown slugs, or, as I said, already burrowed with a sticky widening tube of disgusting black frass left “behind” by a Codling Moth caterpillar, possibly the least attractive member of the Lepidoptera known to man. Oh, and there are one or two bearing the unmistakable canine toothmarks of a young fox that is trying out everything from eggshells — well worth picking up from the compost heap to crunch up on the lawn and lick to extract any little traces of protein before leaving the fragments all over the grass — to sour green apples, yelp, won’t bite those again.

So, it’s back to the kitchen with a handful or two of newly fallen apples, to be washed, peeled, and carefully cut up so as to leave the assorted inhabitants and their detritus … behind.