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Strummer and the Mescaleros (from their 2001 album Global A Go-Go; watch the video).John Chapman was a hard-boiled and slightly mad frontiersman who travelled from Pennsylvania through to Ohio, ahead of mainstream settlers, planting apple seeds and creating

This time of year the crab apples are at their most impressive: the trees are laden with little yellow or red apples that hang on until long after the last leaves have fallen. These are really useful smallish trees, not just for their colourful

in 1840. Obviously these things need time to grow and fruit so we then have a hiatus until 1857. On October 24th that year the RHS held their Grand Fruit Exhibition and, according to the report:"In the class of single dishes of dessert apple the first

there - the trees are blossoming like there's no tomorrow. My children and I gave my wife a small orchard for her birthday in 2000. It always looks gorgeous at this time of year, and gets better every season as the trees mature.We planted young, whippy trees - a

, it's the apples and pears that have been the subject of my attentions. As we know, apple trees blossom picturesquely in spring. These flowers then develop into small fruits and then, in June, the tree shrugs and loses a fair few of these (this

trees that are worth looking into. Fruit trees are grown on different rootstocks and, depending on which one you choose, these regulate the eventual height of the tree - useful not just for small gardens, but also because it means that the best apples

Spot the odd one out from these four: 1) Quincy Jones (Music Producer who worked with Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra). 2) Thomas de Quincey (ferociously clever writer and drug addict). 3)Quincy ME (1970s television series starring Jack Klugman

The other day there was a tweet* from Gardeners' World regarding a post I wrote on this blog a couple of years ago, about my top five trees for small gardens.While I still stick with those five I thought I might try and add a further five just

were decorated with sparkly cobwebs. On the way back we stopped off to pick up some windfalls from beneath the apple trees, avoiding those already chewed by the fox and muntjac.At lunchtime I sat outside and ate a piece of toast (with home-made apricot

as relentlessly. It is best just to watch: in the morning the spiders webs are glimmering with dew, the sun sneaks over the horizon at a much more civilised hour, the light is different, the sun (when it is there) is just the right temperature, the trees