A failure

This is a Lilac one of 3 which I planted about 5 years ago, as you can see this has decided to give up which is a pity as it was a sort of maroon colour.

I have had successes though with my apples. I managed to select what I consider an amount that the tree could handle so that the size was good. Over recent years I would discard well over half but still leave somewhere approaching 260 apples so this year I got rid of well over 70% but still I wondered if I had taken off sufficient but I did. They are a little earlier than usual this year and I noticed the odd good one, those without maggot damage was beginning to drop off so on Monday I went out and picked all of the apples off the tree. I was a little surprised because most were ready to drop off. Mind you I did forget this year to put in the tree an apple moth trap so I found that I had well over 20 apples were affected by grubs. All in all I had over 150 apples and have managed to store 72 in my garage and the photo shows about 50 more perfectly good apples which I shall eat some and give some away. The lad who had a taste of one said he liked them so obviously I will give him one each day he works when he has finished the James Grieve apples most of which are very large. The other photo shows that I am still getting plenty of runner beans. I guess that I will, weather permitting be picking them well into October although the weather this Summer has not been at all good. More soon.