Spring cleaning

April's Ashmead

In April I reach into the back of my disorganized refrigerator and eat the very last of my fall hoard. There are always a few surprises.

So it is that in the past few weeks I have had my last Lady Alice (excellent flavor still crisp and firm, if ever-so-slightly rubbery), Ananas Reinette (inedible) and Ashmead's Kernel (an absolute marvel). Also a few other odds and ends, with similarly mixed results.

I save some of these by design and some by accident, but the truth is that I hate to say goodbye. Deciding when to eat the last of something feels, ridiculous as it sounds, like a big decision and I wait.

I won't go so far as to call that a character flaw, but it is not perfectly functional. I have had to pitch apples gone bad that would have been delightful earlier.

By way of compensation comes some personal knowledge of how apples fare in storage (sometimes with unusual flavors).

I also get occasional treasures like my April Ashmead, indisputably worth the wait. What a great great apple.

Three months, now, until the harvest begins again.