Ripeness is All..

...rightly spoke the Bard's Edgar in that most melancholy of his [the Bard's not Edgar's] works 'King Lear'.

Setting aside the grim 'Men must endure..' aspect of the quotation, the notion that timing is everything is an excellent all-round aide memoire and motto for the gardener; on a par with those wise words of Ecclesiastes - "For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted."

On the more specific matter of fruit within the garden our seasonal rhythm goes something like this:

Early Spring: make firm purpose of amendment and this year not to waste the fine potential harvest of plums, apples, pears and figs even. Think about doing some pruning. Visualise plenteous store of plucked fruit, both fresh and preserved, to supplement the winter menus and to spread a little warm moral glow of 'sustainability' about the house. Determine not to see vast hordes of windfalls shipped off to the compost heap, nor family dogs making themselves wondrously sick from eating half-rotted Bramleys.

Late Spring to Early Summer: realise it's too late for serious pruning or other meaningful preparation, but decide to attack fig trees anyway. Note with some pleasure later that effect appears to be positive with fig buds sprouting all over the shop.

Mid-Summer: think about ordering jam-jars and other materials for preserving impending harvest. Forget actually to do so. Begin to ponder where exactly in the house or outbuildings one could find room to store volumes of fruit at suitable ambient temperatures - no solution obvious to hand.

Late Summer: clear evidence of ripe figs abundant. Pluck one for test eating and find it delicious beyond telling. Spend most of next 48 hours on the lavatory and conclude that a little fig goes too long a way. Plums and apples beginning to fall yet are utterly unripe and uneatable. (Consider gluing them back on tree for further work.) Pears holding fast - huge and unremittingly hard as granite.

Early Autumn: wake up one morning to find lawn bestrewn with fallen apples. Dogs wolfing as many as they can before actually throwing up. Finally order jam-making items. Figs look wonderful, but are eyed with active suspicion and unfond memory [see 'Late-summer' above]. Pears continue their adamantine fastness. Plums attracting wasps, a sure sign of ripeness yet also a clear warning not to interfere - wasps being considerably more aggressively agile in upper branches of a fruit tree than any human competitor. Decide to be Zen and let wasps have their feast first.

On a Certain Day: all pears turned to mush overnight. Magical, if not quasi-mystical, transformation from solid to near liquid. Something akin to the 'miraculous' melting of St. Januarius's blood - but even less credible, annual empirical evidence notwithstanding. Also, wasps have gone but then so has large majority of the plums. Most apples now earthbound having completed their Newtonian journey.

Late Autumn: some boxes of assorted fruit stored in attic room above office waiting for chance to sterilise jam jars. (Acknowledge that location is far from ideal and probably too hot, but cannot find other available space.) Omit to sterilise jam jars. A while later remember to check attic boxes then commit rotting contents to compost heap. Dogs continue to feast thereof and to be sick therefrom.

Winter: mull over lessons from year and conclude most are much the same as in previous years. Plan ahead for coming year.