Autumn harvest – apples and conkers

I had been hoping to get out and about with N to do a really good proper ‘harvest’ of all the exciting seeds and fruits, but it’s been a bit sporadic.

We did get out blackberrying although the haul was a bit rubbish. The next couple of weeks and the cows are back in the fields again so we’ve probably missed the chance unless I go out on my own.

We’ve picked some apples off the trees in our front garden. We’ve got two cooking and one eating apple tree and there’s lots of fruit. N’s learnt how to twist the apples off, although they’re a bit high for him to reach. He needs to grow a bit for it to be more interesting for him.

I’ve also been on the look out for conkers. We have a couple of mature oak trees, and there’s been lots of fallen acorns – N’s not interested at all by those. But we seem short of horse chestnut trees.

One of our work car parks has some great conkers though. It’s at the other office, but I remembered to park there when we popped into town at the weekend, so we managed to pick up some gorgeous shiny brown conkers there. Then back at home I noticed that the tree next to the eating apple one, was a horse chestnut (albeit a young one).

There weren’t many cases on the tree at all; we found one conker that had fallen, and I removed one other which had the conker peeking out…I had to otherwise we’d have lost it in the bushes. There’s only a couple of other cases, so I’m thinking I might have to take N to conker alley, a road full of horse chestnut trees, this weekend, where my mum used to take us as children to collect bags of conkers.

N loves the conkers. He holds them carefully in his hand for a while, then he likes to stuff them in his pocket (always the left pocket). Note to self, must remember to check his trouser pockets before putting in the washing machine!

His dad tells him to put them above the Aga to dry them out so they can play conkers, but I like to try and keep them shiny brown.

We’ve got a little jar of them. Our little harvest collection…although we do need to collect some more really.

Maybe if we get enough, I can put some in the corners of each room to try and get rid of some of the numerous spiders.  My only question then is, where do all those spiders go?  Answers below, please.