Notes from the Orchard
~ …or Why I Read a Whole Book About One Fruit ~
Not long ago, over one of those conversations that happen when neither party is truly sober enough to stop themselves, a friend asked me: "Why the apple? Why buy a book about apples?" Fair question, I suppose. There I was, proudly brandishing The Apple: A Delicious Story by Sally Coulthard — a book which, at first glance, sounds like something your retired uncle might write after one too many pints and an unfortunate fall from a ladder during apple-picking season.
But here’s the thing: imagine you're sitting in a pub, slightly tipsy, perhaps nursing a cider that's just dry enough to make your gums reconsider their existence. And all of a sudden, you start thinking about apples. Not metaphorical apples, nor the ones with half-eaten logos. Just apples — real, crisp, slightly tart, countryside-grown, juice-down-your-wrist apples.
Conversation starter? Perhaps not. Conversation ender? Almost certainly. But I thrive in such absurdities. It's a calling.
For the record, I know exactly what apples I like — I just have no idea what they’re called. They must be crunchy, juicy, a delicate balance between sweet and sour. No mealy, floury nonsense. No "nisipoase" — that Romanian word that perfectly captures the essence of biting into a slightly damp sandcastle. Give me a countryside apple any day — the sort that tastes faintly of woodsmoke, rain, and a life lived at a slightly slower pace. The kind you pluck straight off the tree, wipe on your jacket in a half-hearted attempt at hygiene, and bite into like a man who's decided that if this is the way he goes, so be it.
Years ago, while living in southern Germany, I took a solitary ramble through the hills above Tübingen. Late autumn—leaves gone, air brisk enough to encourage brisk walking. In a half-forgotten orchard I met a tree that stopped me mid-stride. From a metre up the trunk split into two clear personalities: branches on the left bore neat little red apples; those on the right presented equally tidy yellow ones.
Some long-retired farmer, bless his curiosity, had grafted two varieties onto one unsuspecting trunk and left the experiment to get on with things. It stood there—half-blushing, half-sunshine—proof that with a sharp knife and patience you can cheat nature into a duet. I remember thinking it looked rather pleased with itself, inasmuch as trees ever do. To my chagrin, I can’t find the photo that I took, but hopefully I’ll recover it from my hard drives.
Now, back home in Romania we don’t publish many single-subject nature books. Our shelves favour wars, poets and, occasional celebrity cookbook and an abundance of self-help gurus; anything with wings or leaves tends to arrive courtesy of a foreign imprint. The British, meanwhile, will cheerfully devote 300 pages to the inner life of a hedgerow or the melancholy of the earthworm. Which is, frankly, admirable. There’s a certain national talent for taking an overlooked corner of creation, dusting it off, and announcing, “Right, who’s for 80,000 words on this then?” Coulthard sits firmly in that tradition—and I’m glad of it, because somebody ought to care enough to write the definitive account of fruit that keeps school lunchboxes honest.
She begins in the mountains of Kazakhstan where Malus sieversii trees still drop crab-sized grenades on unsuspecting wildlife, then rolls her apple westward through Silk Road caravans, monastic orchards and Georgian walled gardens. Along the way she notes the fruit’s inconvenient habit of genetic anarchy: plant a pip from your prize Cox and you’re likely to grow a surly hedge. Hence grafting—exactly what my two-coloured German tree embodied, though mine looked rather more dashing than the textbook diagrams.
Coulthard’s whistle-stop tour of apple folklore is mercifully free of sermonising. She nods to Eden (fruit still under dispute, snake long since lawyered-up), tips her hat to the Norse goddess Idunn who hoarded golden apples like a mythic lunch-box, and then detours into good, solid British custom: wassailing. That’s the mid-winter ritual where villagers troop into the orchard, hang toast in the branches, shout encouragement at the trunks and occasionally fire a shotgun skywards—all, allegedly, to wake the trees and guarantee next year’s crop. It’s half-pagan, half-pantomime, and wholly satisfying proof that we’ll do almost anything for decent fruit. Coulthard relates these vignettes with the calm tone of someone recounting family gossip over a strong cup of tea—amused, affectionate, and quietly sceptical.
She ends, inevitably, in the supermarket aisle, lamenting that Britain once boasted thousands of named cultivars yet now settles for the same half-dozen that can survive shipping, industrial polishing and a focus-group’s delicate feelings. It struck an immediate, painful chord: back home in Romania our shelves are much the same—two rows of glossy Golden and Ionathan posing under fluorescent lights, while the orchards that once cranked out Frumos de Voinesti, Florina, Generos, Starkrimson and half a dozen heirloom curiosities quietly soldier on, unloved by the barcode scanner. Coulthard’s reproach is gentle—no finger-wagging, just a raised eyebrow—but you still close the book wanting to do something useful: plant a sapling, badger your greengrocer, or at the very least mutter darkly in the fruit aisle about the tyranny of uniformity.
The Apple is a brisk, faintly tart read—call it a literary Braeburn. It won’t teach you to prune, but it will make you glance at every Granny Smith with a sudden pang of historical responsibility. It also arms you with enough trivia to derail any future pub conversation, which, if you’ve read this far, is presumably the point.
Next time someone asks, “Why the apple?” I shall answer: because one fruit can hold a thousand stories. Because somewhere in Tübingen a tree is still quietly showing off its two-tone outfit. And because, in a world obsessed with the next big thing, it’s rather comforting to bite into something that’s been quietly perfecting itself for ten thousand years.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a nameless apple on the windowsill eyeing me with expectation. Jacket-wipe, decisive crunch, small victory.
(End of orchard ramble. You may resume your regularly scheduled vegetables.)
