Celtic tree of life knotwork design

The wasps have found the windfalls under the Bramley again, and Dad says we are to leave them for the press on Saturday, though I don't know who will carry them up the bank with his back as it is. I went up on my own this morning to look at the old tree. You'll remember how the trunk splits into three and how Grandad said it was braided like your plait when you were six and wouldn't sit still. Someone has been at the bark with a knife. Three loops, each running into the next, cut right at the root where the ground goes soft. I put my hand on them and they were warm from the sun, which is daft, I know.

The crown is thinner than last year. The branches still curl out at their ends like the scrolls on the gate, and the little green fruit hangs where the leaves have gone to lace. Mr Pritchard came over the fence to ask whether we'd sell the Kingston Black crop by the box or the whole lot. I said we'd see. I didn't tell him I'd sooner let every apple rot than sell the first fruit of that tree to a man who calls it the old thing.

I found something this morning, pushed into the hollow where the bottom loop meets the earth. A tobacco tin, rusted shut, with a slip of paper inside in Grandad's capitals: SHARE THE LOOPS, DON'T CUT THEM. Under that, in pencil, a list of the years he pruned it, and beside each one a tiny drawing of a leaf. Nine years of leaves. I counted them twice. The last is from the spring before he went, and beside it there is no leaf, only a dot.

So I'm writing to ask you to come home for the pressing. Bring the boys and bring the good knife. We'll take the first apples off the lowest branch together and leave the rest to fall where they will, the way he wanted. Love, Ruth.