The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
It’s a popular saying, meaning a child grows up to be similar to its parents. But it’s also very literal, in that apples don’t take flight and magically drop in a neighbour’s garden when they fall from the tree.
Sadly, they fall in yours.
Well I say sadly, but maybe you love your apples. Ours are cooking apples and they make a lovely pie and crumble – or at least they would, if I ever got round to making a pie or crumble.
The trouble is, though I love my tree – the blossom in the spring, the knobbly trunk in the winter, the sight of the rosy apples in summer (the second picture is from my study window) – I don’t especially love its apples.
I would go one further than that. The apples are a pain. They make me feel guilty when they hang on the tree, all fat and juicy and crying out to be picked and cooked. But I’m no Delia, or Nigella (that latter is much to my husband’s disappointment). I cook to eat, not because I enjoy it. So where I have to cook a main course because that’s a necessary part of a reasonably healthy diet, I don’t have to cook a pudding. They’re bad for us, even with apples in them.
What a shame then that my husband and eldest son actually like a crumble or a pie (the youngest will only consider it if smothered in chocolate). It seems that apple really isn’t falling far from the tree …
Mind you, husband and sons are also the ones who want the tree chopped down. It seems no matter how much they like an apple pie, they absolutely hate picking up the rotten apples.
And of course there are quite a lot of them over the summer months, because, did I mention, I don’t like cooking?!