Round door under a tree on a calf

The round green door at the bottom of Cutler's Hill came unstuck on Tuesday, so I have had the hinges off and oiled them, and the lad from the cider house has promised to hang it properly before the Harvest Fair. You will laugh, but I sat on the step with my tea and waited for it to open of its own accord. Old Mrs Pryce swears the tree planted that door herself the year her husband died, and I am not about to argue with a woman who has pruned that orchard for fifty years.

The Bramleys are heavy this year. The pink blossom came early in April and the frost missed us, so the wasps have been drunk on windfalls since the middle of August. I have put the pickers on the north rows first, where the stones hold the warmth, and the roots that come up through the grass there are as thick as my wrist. Mind your boots on the path. Half the pink flowers in the hedge are ones I never planted.

On Thursday I found a pair of boots by the gate, small and muddy, with a sprig of clover tucked into one lace. Nobody in the village will own to them. I left a jar of plums on the step, as my mother taught me to do for the stranger who passes in late summer, and this morning the jar was empty with the lid set neatly on the stone.

Come up before the fair and bring your good coat. There is a room at the back of the press house with a bed made up, and I have hung a lamp by the door so you can find your way up from the lane. If the green door is shut when you arrive, knock twice, then once more for luck.

Yours in apples, Margaret